Don't Envy the "Elite"! (The Success Cube)

Well, I gotta tell you, if I've learned anything at all from all the Epstein files -- setting aside the sexual crimes and improprieties -- it's that many members of the rich, famous, and elite are sleazy, yes, but more than that, they are pathetic. Now, I don't think any of us would want to trade places with anyone else. Like Bob Dylan said once when asked, "Is it hard being Bob Dylan?": "Well, it's a lot easier than it would be for me to be you or anyone else." That's the way life is. But I definitely would not like to trade places with Bill Gates or Larry Summers or any number of people in Epstein's orbit, who, with all their wealth and power and public success, nevertheless come across like losers in the game of life. Imagine being in your forties or fifties or sixties and going to Epstein to get advice on how to "talk to girls," just like you are 13 or 14 years old and Epstein is the cool kid in your grade who knows all sorts of stuff. Never mind that the cool guy is an asshole, hiding his own insecurities, he specializes in things that impress other people. Like in the case of our overgrown adolescents, offering to let you ride on his private jet. A private jet! That is so cool. 

It certainly seems like there are many people out there who are fixated on worldly success at expense of other kinds of success. Maybe such single-mindedness is what it takes to get to that level. But most people know that it's good to be happy and successful on one's own terms in as many areas of life as possible. Which is why they would never trade participation in their bowling league or church or book club for a ride on Epstein's private jet to his private island. Indeed, only an insecure idiot would make that trade! 

This is where the "success cube" comes in, something I encountered years ago and often still think of. It's a way of visualizing life's achievements so as to seek balance and fullness in a holistic sense. In the cube:

• The height is the amount of successes
• The width is the variety of successes
• The depth is how much we we enjoy them

You could easily imagine a person with huge success in their field, be it business, sports, or even art. But if they have lives that are otherwise empty and they are miserable to boot, you have a cube that is more like a vertical stick. Someone who excels in just the first two has a wall that could be blown down in the wind. Reflecting on the success cube enables us to see in ways often not acknowledged by the wider, less imaginative culture what we have actually accomplished in our lives. This model puts friendship and family and other hard-to-quantify modes of being on equal footing with more the predictable money-oriented modes celebrated in our popular media.

In an interesting twist, when I have thought of the success cube over the years, it was my own version of the cube that I would think of, not the original. Here's how I conceive of it.

• The height is our worldly success
• The width is our success in relationships with family and friends and other associates
• The depth is success in our inner lives, which includes spirituality, equanimity, peace of mind, happiness, and so on.

Looking at myself, I'd have to say that I'm very happy with the height/worldly success. I guess I'm using a metric from the first model here, how much I enjoy it, which is a lot. But more than that, I would say that my worldly success could certainly be larger in scale, and I'd love to see that, but I really believe that the impact of my work is positive and that it achieves exactly what I set out for it to achieve. If I'm being honest, I'd have to admit that number two, relationships is probably my weakest. I'm can be painfully introverted and that has held me back a bit. But I do have a terrific long-term marriage and many joyful times with family and friends that I treasure, so I don't think this is wildly disproportionate. Number three, the inner life, is one that I have put a lot into since very young. Indeed, I've engaged in the kinds of reflections that they normally say people do in the later stages of life for as long as can remember. I have been told I am "an old soul," which I take as compliment, but also with a grain of salt, since I suppose an old soul can also be an asshole. All in all, then, I'm pretty close to a perfect cube, with the width coming in as less than equilateral. I'll take it.

What's interesting is that the fulfillment of each dimension also includes to some degree how much you are achieving in the other two. Life can't be torn apart, as opposed to what some mechanistic scientists may think. I mean I gained nothing from dissecting that fetal pig in high school! So, yes, the cube is not life itself but rather pretty good tool for thinking about our lives and what we want them to be. So I invite you to experiment with one of your own devising. And may your cube be perfectly balanced.