Stay Thirsty
I think a lot about success and its underpinnings. Talent is key, but it will only gain you entrance to a crowded VIP room. Kind of like Platinum Medallion on Delta: you think you’re special, but at LaGuardia, you realize there are a lot of you. Let’s assume you are exceptionally talented. Maybe even in the top 1 percent. Congrats: you join 75 million people, the population of Germany, all vying for more than their share of the world’s resources. When I ask young adults to describe the life they aspire to, most of them outline an environment and accoutrements that are the ecosystem of a cohort that contains millions. Or to put it another way, most young people reading this book likely aspire to be in the top .1 percent. And talent alone won’t get you within spitting distance of .1 percent.
The chaser that takes talent over the top into success is hunger. Hunger can come from a lot of places. I don’t think I was born with it. I have a great deal of insecurity and fear, which, coupled with the instincts we all have, has resulted in hunger. Understanding where hunger comes from can illuminate the difference between success and fulfillment.
For the first eighteen years of my life, I didn’t work hard. At UCLA, we all started as nice, smart, attractive people (“eighteen” and “attractive” are redundant), who had crushes on each other based on a clumsy sense of attraction (“she’s hot” / “he’s cool”). But by senior year, the women were gravitating toward guys who had their shit together, showed early signs of success, or having rich parents, already had the trappings of success, like weekends at their parents’ pads in Aspen or Palm Springs.
The women’s instincts were kicking in, and they were seeking out mates who could better ensure their offspring’s survival—instead of crushing on a funny guy who wore a thin leather tie with Top-Siders and could recite key scenes from the Planet of the Apes trilogy. My instincts were also kicking in, and I wanted to increase my selection set of mates. I decided a requisite for this was to signal success, so I landed a job at Morgan Stanley. I had no idea what investment bankers did, but I knew being one signaled success.
It didn’t take long to realize that the secret is to find something you’re good at. The rewards and recognition that stem from being great at something will make you passionate about whatever that something is. Investment banking, for me, was a unique combination of boring subject matter and a great deal of stress. Figuring out early that my hunger to impress was leading down a road of misery gave me the confidence to get out. I quit the path of success devoid of fulfillment.
The second event also involved the female sex. In my second year of grad school, my mother was diagnosed with an aggressive form of breast cancer. Prematurely discharged from Kaiser Permanente hospital in Los Angeles, she started chemo. She called me at Berkeley and said she was feeling awful. I flew home that afternoon and walked through the door into our dark living room. My mom was lying on the couch, in her robe, contorted and vomiting into a trash can, distraught. She looked at me and asked, “What are we going to do?” It rattles me just to write this.
We were underinsured, and I didn’t have any contacts who were doctors. I felt a rush of emotions, but mostly I wished I had more money and influence. I knew that wealth, among other things, brought contacts and access to a different level of healthcare. We had neither.
Nausea
In 2008, my girlfriend got pregnant, and I witnessed the profoundly disturbing miracle of birth as my son rotated out of her. Note: I still think men should be out of the room. I felt pretty much none of the things you’re supposed to feel: love, gratitude, wonder. Mostly nausea and panic at the science experiment we were embarking on to keep this thing alive. However, as it often does, instinct kicked in, and the experiment became less awful, even likable. The need to protect and provide grew increasingly intense.
When the 2008 financial crisis hit, it hit me hard. I went from sort of wealthy to most definitely not. The previous crisis, in 2000, had registered the same economic effect, but it had rolled right off me, as I was in my early thirties and knew I could take care of myself. But this was different. Not being able to provide for the needs of a kid in Manhattan at the level and texture I envisioned for my son seriously fucked with my sense of why I was here (as in, on Earth) and my worth as a man.1, 2 I was shaping up to fail on a cosmic level, and the flame of hunger burned brighter.
The pressure many of us put on ourselves to be a good provider is irrational. The instinct to protect and nurture your offspring is core to the success of our species. However, believing that your kid must have Manhattan private schools and a loft in Tribeca is your ego, not paternal instincts.3 You can be a good, even great, dad on a lot less than I thought I needed to earn. Nonetheless, I felt deficient.
Lately I feel my hunger changing complexion. More a pursuit of relevance, versus money. I’m spending more time with people and projects I care about, at the expense of earning money. Trying to be more in the moment, and passing on certain economic opportunities so I can do more stuff focused on the condition of my soul. I’m also trying to instill a sense of hunger in my boys via chores. I’m paying them each week for their tasks, hoping they will connect work with reward and get hungry. Also, twice a year after paying them, I mug them (tackle them and steal their money) on the way to their room, as that, too, is a life lesson.