The Road to Success is paved with… rejecting everything you’ve ever learned
Ah, the sweet smell of success…so seemingly elusive to many. What is it? How is it attained? Especially during a period that has witnessed the sharp decline of social mobility?
First, let’s take a brief look of the dictionary definition of “success” as provided by Merriam-Webster. 1a: degree of measure of succeeding. 1b: favorable or desired outcome. Also: the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence.
Note the last line – and how it feels like an afterthought for good reason. So let me begin by saying how success should NOT be defined.
Success should not be defined by visions of yachts, mansions, private jets: in other words, the trappings of success.
After all, these can be easily attained if you are fortunate enough to start off with some degree of inherited family money.
And much the same may be said for those whose visions of success are more rooted in accomplishments rather than things: degrees from an Ivy-plus university (the Ivies, Duke, MIT, Stanford, University of Chicago), a career as neurosurgeon, partner in a white shoe law firm, upper management at a corporation or university, hedge fund banker, etc. — and a direct line to a US Senator or Representative, if you please.
But these too are trappings – even if less crass and overtly materially driven. Why? Because no less than the Ferrari, a 15,000 sq. ft mansion or whatever visible marker we use as a symbol of success, these predominantly professional and upper-middle class accomplishments have also become much more increasingly dependent on family wealth over the course of the last thirty years or so. Indeed, I might even add that this notion is arguably even worse than material things if only because it limits the idea of success to a very miniscule number of people.
Why, you ask — since we supposedly live in a meritocratic society?
The key word is “supposed.” Unlike twentieth-century admissions (which were already somewhat rigged to exclude Jews in the earlier half of the century), current admissions to the most prestigious universities have become much more of a lottery than ever before with the exponentially rising number of college applications: an inevitability given the introduction of the Common Application. Who wouldn’t want to apply to Stanford for the sheer hell of it, even if a long shot?
Secondly, the prices of the universities have also risen dramatically especially since the 1990s — making it far more difficult for a brilliant, blue-collar Bill or Bella to attend. For instance, the median family income at Yale in 2022 was $192,600.
Thirdly, let’s not forget that prestigious universities not only tend to attract students from ambitious, better-off families, but also prefer students from such backgrounds. According to a recent study, Ivy-plus universities admit applicants from families in the top 1% at more than twice the rate of students in any other income group with similar SAT or ACT scores.
Further pressure is added to the mix when our nation’s “establishments” — from Wall Street banks, leading corporations, academe, the media in all of its myriad forms, to state and federal governments – have long preferred graduates of such universities because their leaders have often shared a similar education, if not family background. Tenure-track faculty, for instance, are now predominantly drawn from upper middle class families. Rulers of the world, unite!
In other words, you pretty much need to have won the lottery of being born into the right family in order to win the university and professional lotteries — which often means overwhelmingly white (especially now that affirmative action has been overturned). It’s an injustice that only rubs salt into the wounds of those already deprived of the advantages enjoyed by middle class families – let alone by the very wealthy: e.g., not having to face food insecurity, being having a quiet place to study, having supportive parents who provide a solid head start by supporting and encouraging a child’s interests.
To define success by any of these parameters is only playing into a rigged game, allowing just those lucky enough to be born on third base to win. So let’s not be trapped by these arbitrary standards that are slipping out of the grasp of so many.
A much better gauge of success is a more internalized one, that accounts for the level of one’s accomplishments combined with a consideration of any obstacles or hurdles faced by a person, particularly those due to factors outside of their control: their race, sex, class, appearance (don’t forget pretty privilege!) and yes, your generation. Because according to the World Economic Forum, those born in 1980 have only a 45% chance of outearning their parents at age 30, compared to 93% for those born in 1940.
So if you were the first in your family to earn a college degree and do better than your parents — something increasingly difficult to do these days — you are ultimately more successful than that comfortably well-off legacy admit Princeton grad on his way to the U.S. Treasury via Goldman Sachs. Or his best friend at Andover and Brown who is on her way a few years later to a tenure-track job in comparative literature at NYU after a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Because you’ve succeeded beyond the odds.
And if you are the son or daughter of immigrants who learned English as a third language but you wound up majoring in communications after working your way through college and now earn a living from public relations, you earn more respect from me than a Stanford English major, a daughter of a hedge fund manager and law professor, who works as an editor at The New York Times.
This is not to deny that those who have achieved those traditional hallmarks of distinction are not successful. They are. But I can’t help but feel that those who have had to fight much harder from below are more successful given their circumstances.
Not least, take a writer who has just completed a thoroughly researched major biography of Walt Whitman. If he’s had to rely on several jobs to stitch together a living, he will face far more challenges and require more time completing it when compared to a tenure-track professor on a sweet, six-figure salary or wo/man of leisure married to a wealthy spouse.
The writer with 2+ jobs also struggles to find time to write not only because of multiple jobs but also consumed by household chores because s/he cannot simply hire a maid, housekeeper, caregivers or other necessary helpers. Taking the time to travel to libraries and other places for research are also significant burdens.
Needless to say, the completion and publication of that book represents a much better example of success for this lone, independent writer than it does for the more advantaged one. (Readers of my essays https://readmedium.com/the-celebration-that-almost-never-happened-4b99bdf3340b and https://readmedium.com/life-is-a-battlefield-from-fighting-bullies-to-writing-about-rights-af0520b02c8f will recognize this description of the writer as a thinly disguised self-portrait!)
It’s time, then, to focus on more internalized assessments of success in our age of rampant inequality and diminished social mobility. If you’ve excelled at or reached a worthy goal in whatever work you do, you are successful — especially if you’ve had to deal with limitations beyond your control. Or if you’ve contributed new insights or techniques that improve or revolutionize your area of specialization. Ask yourself too if you are happy with the rate of your progress.
But to truly determine whether you are successful, ask yourself these questions. How do you react to setbacks? If it doesn’t faze you because you simply don’t view it as a threat but rather an instructive experience, you are successful.
Also, how do you react to other people’s successes? If you find yourself the least bit uncomfortable (how dare he get more claps!), you are probably not as successful as you think you are. Instead of railing, take the opportunity to learn from them. Ditto if you are also reluctant to help others in your area of work: if only because a successful person should welcome, even encourage any improvement in their field. (And sometimes there is a personal benefit as I’ve learned from teaching!) I won’t even mention sabotage. Success is not a zero-sum game any more than getting to the top means knocking others down.
But for an even broader definition of success, let’s turn to Bessie Anderson Stanley’s poem, “Success” (1904). A successful person is one:
who has left the world better than he found it whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem or a rescued soul;
who has never lacked appreciation of Earth’s beauty or failed to express it;
who has always looked for the best in others and given them the best he had;
whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.
Look familiar? A dead ringer for Ralph Waldo Emerson’ “What is success?” Indeed, Bessie Stanley herself perhaps best exemplifies success as an underrecognized woman whose aptly titled “Success” was widely attributed to the Harvard-educated Ralph Waldo Emerson — and sometimes Robert Louis Stevenson — for the longest time. She earned $250 for it in The Brown Book contest too, a pretty sum back then.
At the end of the day, have you given the best of yourself, regardless of the obstacles? Have you searched for the best in others and tried to help them? Have you sought to leave your field and the world a better place?
Then you are a success.
© Frances A. Chiu, August 18, 2023. All Rights Reserved.