Career success doesn’t make you happy

If one read the autoethnographic posts in this blog from the time I began blogging, which was back in 2001 ... ok, you can't--I deleted them all in one stroke in 2007.  I then took a break, and restarted the blog in 2008.  If one read the autoethnographic posts since then, there is a good chance that a reader can put together a composite picture of who I am and what I value most and what I couldn't care for.  

Ever since my young adult years, I have been consciously making decisions in order to lead a life that makes meaning to me.  Meaning that cannot be measured in material terms.

While some might say I had no drive and am a failure, this blog itself is more than evidence that I am trying as much as I can to follow that old sage's advice not to lead a life that is not examined.

Thus, I was immensely pleased when I came across words that somebody else had crafted, which I could then make mine as well: "I'm in the twilight of a mediocre career."  I have been largely at peace with that because I have never intentionally and mindfully worked on progressing in a career anyway.

A career does not make a person.  It is irrelevant to who the human is.  Of the people I have quoted in this context in this blog, my favorite is Bill Watterson, whose creations always make me smile and think.  Watterson said:

having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.
Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.
To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.

David Brooks, who is a couple of years older than me but has always sounded way, way older (!) has yet another book coming out.  In one of those pre-release interviews:

“I’ve far exceeded my expectations. But then you learn the elemental truth that every college student should know: career success doesn’t make you happy.” In midlife, it struck him that he’d spent too much time cultivating what he calls “the résumé virtues” – racking up impressive accomplishments – and too little on “the eulogy virtues”, the character strengths for which we’d like to be remembered.

Sooner or later, most--if not all--of us realize that a successful career is not by itself the source of happiness.  Happiness is one of those strange things that comes from within.  A blue sky with puffy white clouds makes us happy. The giggle of a four year old makes us happy.  A dog chasing his tail makes us happy.  A good time with friends makes us happy.  What the hell has a career got to do with all these, right?

In his latest column, Brooks projects his book against the upcoming end of the academic year ritual: the commencement:

Commencement speakers are always telling young people to follow their passions. Be true to yourself. This is a vision of life that begins with self and ends with self. But people on the road to inner light do not find their vocations by asking, what do I want from life? They ask, what is life asking of me? How can I match my intrinsic talent with one of the world’s deep needs?

Even that is unnecessarily complicated.  I way prefer the Bill Watterson bottom-line: go about inventing your own life's meaning as the route to your happiness; "you'll be happier for the trouble."   As simple as that.

Is what I do (and don't do) worth all that?

I suppose it will be fair if I thought that my life has been far from a linear trajectory, mostly because of the decisions I have made, and continue to make, to chart my own path.

There are many downsides to this, yes, and one of them is this: how would I know that I am doing ok?  Is the trajectory the correct one, or am I being hurled into hell on earth?

The greatest folly that I can make in this assessment is if I use the conventional metric of "success" when my decisions have rarely ever been to follow conventions.  I can, and should, use only measures that are appropriate to the life I have fashioned for myself.

To illustrate the idea, allow me to present this--a typical day in the life of the highly ranked tennis star, Novak Djokovic:

A typical day:

7:30 Wake-up. Tepid glass of water. Stretching. A bowl of muesli with a handful of mixed nuts, some sunflower seeds, sliced fruit, and a small scoop of coconut oil. Chew very slowly.8:30 Meet with coach and physiotherapist. Hit with training partner. Drink two bottles of energy drink, adding a hydration drink with electrolytes if it’s humid.10:00 Stretching. Check color of urine.11:00 Sports massage.12:00 Lunch. Gluten-free pasta with vegetables.1:30 Work out. Drink organic protein shake made from water mixed with pea protein.2:30 Stretching.3:00 Hitting practice.4:30 Stretching.5:00 Business meetings.7:30 Dinner. No Alcohol. No Dessert. Protein. Vegetables, but not beets, potatoes, parsnips, squash or pumpkin, which are too high in carbs.

As I read that, my immediate thought was that the author has described it remarkably well:

The life style of an élite athlete rivals that of an inmate for abstemiousness and monotony. (Tennis players seem to spend half their lives in the shower.) If many of his competitors reside in a county jail of their own making, Djokovic inhabits a supermax prison. 

Indeed, it is almost as if Djokovic is being held in a maximum security prison, with a highly regimented daily life from which he cannot stray.

There is no way that I would want to trade places with him.  Check color of urine?  I don't even bother to look at what comes out when I peeing!

But, that is the life that Djokovic chose for himself. Thus, his measure of success and a good life is also different from mine.

I, for instance, eat whatever suits my fancy that particular moment, and even within my restricted food intake I seem to have an endless array of possibilities compared to what Djokovic allows himself.  I find immense pleasure in creating my own meals, and having coffee whenever it pleases me.  No dessert? No beets? Drink protein shake?

Boiled peanut salad
with red and yellow bell peppers, onion, cilantro, and semi-ripe mango

But, yes, being conventional, I think, will be far easier than to find my own interpretation of life.  It is difficult to even define what life ought to be, and then even more difficult to keep after it.  Bill Watterson--yes, that Calvin and Hobbes guy--put it well in his oft-cited commencement address two decades ago:

having an enviable career is one thing, and being a happy person is another.
Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.
You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.
To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.

It is not easy by any means.  But, yes, it is worth all the trouble.

Subsidies and bailouts explained by Calvin and Hobbes!

I joke with my students that everything we need to understand in this world is right there in Calvin and Hobbes comics. Of course, I do use some of them in my classes--particularly Calvin's comments on school and education, and we know he had quite some views :-)

Thanks to Mankiw's post linking up to a Calvin piece, we now can explain why GM or any other business needs a government bailout! What a brain that Bill Watterson had; if only he had not abruptly called it quits :-(

(click on the image for a larger and clearer one)