Life is not fair. We are not born with equal abilities and advantages, and we all struggle with our own unique challenges as well as the universal adversities of being a human. I am not sure where this idea came from that when things are not fair, they are wrong. As if somehow the unfairness could be fixed.
Last week I got to interview my friend Caitlin about her work, in her own words. The Globe and Mail also wrote about Caitlin, with a spin on it. I got some very positive responses about how much my readers enjoyed reading Caitlin’s words. The G&M article became the host of a “semi-moderated” hatefest. I suppressed the desire to respond (thank goodness “registering” is such a turn-off), but the two articles and the responses inspired a few thoughts on success, advantage, adversity, and the fallacy of fairness.
On Success -
They say that success is “who you know” and I think for almost every human endeavor this is true. The chapter on “Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen” in Malcom Gladwell’s The Tipping Point explains this better than I ever could. Its true that some people by luck are born into a family or go to a school where they have opportunities to make connections when they are very young. They get a bit of a head start. Perhaps you don’t know the people who might help you out – yet. Its amazing how getting out in the world and being positive and personable creates new connections. If your strategy is to sit at home and write negative anonymous comments, you deserve your anonymity and your failure.
On Advantage -
Somehow we are all born with innate inclinations we don’t choose, and all born into families and circumstances we don’t choose. It is one thing to criticise people for their choices, because choices can be changed – but criticising the things that no one gets to choose is deeply unproductive behavior.
While I think we have innate inclinations, I don’t believe that talent is innate. To me, talent is what happens when an inclination is encouraged by practice. Since I was a child, I had the inclination to look at clothes and draw them. Years of doing it and thousands of drawings later, I have developed a talent for it. I may not be the most talented fashion illustrator out there, but I have also spent enough time on my inclination to be an entrepreneur to figure out how to make a living on it. As Hugh MacLeod says, you have to put the hours in.
On Adversity -
The flip side of the coin of advantage is adversity – but like the success/failure thing it is way more complicated and intertwined than simple opposites. Advantage and adversity can be the same thing – notoriety brings attention both positive and negative. Those who receive acclaim at a young age also get the kind of scrutiny and criticism for their early, less mature work while those who create in obscurity get the relative freedom to experiment and fail without risking public shame. Raised expectations raise the stakes. As I am curious about career trajectories, often it seems like supernova success is a great liability. See Yves Saint Laurent, Orson Welles, Michael Jackson.
How you deal with adversity can turn it into advantage.
On Fairness -
That some of us are better at some things than others, that advantage and adversity is a random lottery, is what gives humanity its edge. If all things were equal, there would be no ambition, no striving. There would be no need to seek improvement. Success and failure would mean nothing. It is sometimes brutal, but without injustice we would have nothing to transcend.
