Death and Underachievement

In Death and Underachievement: A Guide to Happiness in Work, Ryan Norbauer has some interesting thoughts on the endless, Sisyphean struggle for achievement, achievement, and more achievement…

And all the facts point to a universe that is utterly indifferent to your body-mass index, your latest promotion, or how well-organized your reference filing system is. You neighbors may pretend to care — and then proceed to think of you with acrimonious covetousness or jealousy — but, as the Copernican principle reminds us, in the long run your neighbors are just like you: a speck, on a speck, on a speck. (Listen to Neil deGrasse Tyson’s interview in the last part of this Radiolab segment to have this concept dizzyingly driven home.) But even if we were to abandon all reason and evidence and assume the human race enjoys some sort of privileged status in the affairs of the universe, we need only remember that each of us is one among 6.6 billion people (give or take), and that even if you were to attain a level of accomplishment that (let’s face it) you could never even dream of approaching — say, becoming prime minister of Canada — the vast majority of people now and ever living will never even have heard of you…

If we are to accept achievement as the vehicle to guide us through life, we must at least admit to ourselves that it’s a ferris wheel we’re riding and not a bullet train. I’m ready to make that admission. I say fuck this ride; let’s go eat cotton candy.

Reading Norbauer’s essay put me in mind of a quote that I’d always thought was from Ralph Waldo Emerson. To my surprise, it’s actually from a work by Bessie Anderson Stanley:

To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.