The title of this post comes from a meme about a video-playing son and his ever-supportive dad. I am borrowing that dad’s enthusiasm perspective in this post because I want to put “winning” into perspective.
First of all, let’s address the elephant in the room — the fact that a huge share of our “success” is predetermined by where we are born/the papers we carry. An American baby has massive advantages over a baby from [insert poorer country here] due to nothing more than “chosing the right parents” — also known as holding membership in the Lucky Sperm Club. I wrote about this two years ago.
Second, it’s important to put winning or success into contexts — relative, temporal, collective and material.
Relative success is “compared to what,” and it can be reasonable (“you’re doing better today than yesterday”) or not (“you’re not as rich as Bezos”). The most frustrating thing is seeking success relative to a moving target, i.e., keeping up with the Joneses or the Kardashians or one of the 1700+ billionaires. In fact, even billionaires have problems here — with “bigger” billionaires. Veblen warned about the conspicuous consumption of positional goods as an attempt to “get ahead” of others, and it’s a fools game. The only healthy way to engage with this kind of success is by comparing yourself to yourself, and even that can be counterproductive (blaming yourself without cause). It’s much more common to see overconsumption and waste as the result of pursuing this kind of “success.”
Temporal success comes with doing well for your time in life. Thus, it’s doing well in school, before doing well with work and family, then doing well with retirement and death. It ALSO means letting go of childhood when it’s time to be an adult and letting go of work (even family) when it’s time to get old and die. I personally have zero regrets about getting older. Although I have my doubts about death, I can sense my mind and emotions trying to deal with its inevitable arrival as I age, day by day. People who are unwilling to face changes in life, career, looks or health are fighting time, which is a classic example of a losing battle. Remember this riddle from the Hobbit?
This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.
The answer is Time. Time doesn’t give any fucks.
Collective success comes from being on the right team (or avoiding the losing team). This success depends on you being a team player rather than an egoist or “leader of lessor people.” It requires humility as well as appreciation of those around you who may not be better than you (at all, at anything) but who are working towards the same goals. Collective success might be another of those elephants in the room, if one thinks of the importance of family, or a neighborhood, or the workers who enrich billionaires and the soldiers who battle for generals. You should, at a minimum, be thankful to your team members. More generally, you should do your best to support team and avoid undermining it.
Material success relates to money and stuff, the place you live and the goodies that you have. This one is more absolute than relative success, so it’s actually easier to achieve: Can you drink the water? Do you have a warm bed, adequate clothing and enough food? Can you work and play without too much stress? In many cases, you are doing “good enough” materially, but sometimes we are tempted to demand the higher standard of living suggested by advertisers. That road leads to ruin.
To wrap up, I’ll put a few more recurring ideas into context:
- Material consumption does not deliver happiness. The citizens of rich countries are not necessarily happier than those of poor countries. Happiness depends on your friends and family, your “relative improvements and prospects,” and your outlook on life.
- Some times, good enough is pretty good and perfect is a real problem. I’ve codified this as “90 percent is good enough,” which I say to myself when I run into diminishing returns. Life is too complex to “conquer” all the time, and we sometimes ask more of ourselves than anyone might expect, so don’t kill yourself for naught.
- Taking good health, relationships and work as given (and appreciated!), I’ve been enjoying my 50s for two reasons. First, I’ve made it “over the hump” and thus have less ambition for goals and more appreciation for the little things that work. Second, I have more patience (or tolerance?) of the youngsters around me — some of them older than me! — who have not yet appreciated such satisfaction. What can I do with them except hope that they figure it out? Humanity would benefit.
What is your measure of success? Has it changed over time? How are you doing?