Success doesn't have to hurt

You know, there's the mindset in this country, certainly in New England, that success follows only from grueling efforts. One who is calm and happy and takes it easy will not succeed. I see this fallacy everywhere, experience it firsthand: at work, in creative writing workshops, in the media. I wonder if this has something to do with the seemingly miserable 'founders' of the country. They set about their hard work of killing and rebuilding wearing their puritan and religious shackles - all in the cold weather!

At work I see it in the culture established by the founders of the company. They are MIT folks who believe that it is obsessively rigorously detailed work - work that never ever ever ends - that has brought the company success. Thing is, there is so much wasteful effort that goes on there too, so much sloppy managing, so much overlooking of the obvious. Everyone is too busy trying to be stellar in their own little compulsive way, in their own little gray-walled cube devoid of any pretty or soulful decoration. What's really annoying is that everyone is trying to outdo each other with just how 'picky' or 'anal' they are. Really. People boast about such things. People win awards for working through sickness, sacrificing their weekends, for neglecting their family. Truly.

And you see the impact such fanatic and compulsive attention to detail has on people: many of the people I work with look much, much older than they are. They are out of shape, they are prematurely bald, they are unsociable. Most of them look like they've never been out in sunlight.

Why can't we do a really good job and call it a day, and - um, here's an idea - be happy! Why do we have to 'destroy our competitors' and become a 5 billion dollar company? How about this as a goal: fostering a mutually supportive, friendly, happy, and productive environment. The rest is garbage. It really is. It breeds unhappiness and unhealth and spawns a mutant breed of people who nature can't quite recognize. For every obsessive, neurotic, hypo-diligent person out there, surely there is some quiet, perceptive, empathetic and peaceful soul harmoniously doing her thing. How's about we call her in for a 9:00am Monday morning meeting and learn her secret to success?

I saw a bit PDiddy's show this weekend, the one where he's trying to make a hip hop star out of some unknown young woman. First off, the man doesn't sit well with me. He's just arrogant and obtuse and a disrespectful traveler. ("We're gonna rock Paris like it's never been rocked before!" By this, he meant sitting in an expensive hotel room and drinking until he vomited his camembert. Real multi-cultural.) In it, he insisted on working the women until they were exhausted, on throwing insults at them, belittling them, strutting around with some faux-power, on reminding them that when they were famous, they'd have to put up with this or that drudgery so you'd better get used to it now ladies!

What delusion.

You know what, I highly doubt that as 'a famous person' one faces constant drudgery. Nor would one have to. One could actually enjoy one's greater freedom, money, recognition. One might actually be able to control her life a bit more than when she need no longer concern herself with mundane worries such as rent and car repairs.

This fanaticism with 'toughness' (and I certainly wouldn't call it that - unsophisticated is more like it) and sacrifice is some gross mixture of some brute gross maleness thing, and some self-flagellating god thing.

Really now. We can do better.

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