Success

If Life=Time and Time=Money, then Money=Life. So if you earn less than someone else, your life is worth less than his. And anything on Earth or in the area of outer space we can currently reach is only worth whatever dollar amount we can set on it.

The Life-Money value actually goes beyond salary. For instance, military personnel fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan might not be lavishly paid, but the investment backing them up adds to their monetary cost, and therefore to their value. The individuals become vulnerable to destruction, but their role is valuable, or at least valued.

When I was a senior in high school, my counselor asked me, “What is success?”

“Success is being able to do something you love for a living,” I said.

“Bullshit,” he said. “Success is money. Go out there and make as much money as you can. Get a good job.”

Of course I rebelled against his analysis. In so doing I explored it from the underside.

Old Smither had a point. Success is, in fact, money. But I was right too. If you are making a living at what you love, you are getting it to produce income. That’s money, the measurable unit of success. If satisfaction happens to trot along beside it, so much the better. Maybe Smither was just feeling extra cynical that day. He was a pretty crappy guidance counselor, but he was probably pining for that better job. We all have bad days at work, some of us more than others.

An archaeologist I met warned against getting stuck in “golden handcuffs.” Archaeology. Now there’s a big-bucks occupation. But he loves field work and challenges himself with the strain of doing a job where every mistake gets brutally punished by an uncompromising jury of peers.

“When you dig a site you only get one chance to do it right. You can’t put it back and start over. Things are lying where they lie,” he said. “You have to remove them meticulously and document them exactly, because no one else will ever see them as you found them. Archaeologists are a bitchy bunch. It’s much worse than food or the arts.”

He feels like a success, worn-out jeans, grimy fingernails and all. How many people will actively care about the lives of aboriginal New Hampshirites from 12,000 years ago? You never know what may seem interesting or important. It doesn’t hurt to know. And it’s good to know that the person in charge of finding out really cares about his work. He’s making enough money to live. Money. That’s success.

Retirement income is a different story. It’s one thing to maintain life when one is young, healthy and relatively mobile. But humans are the only creatures that retire. Everything else, animal or vegetable, works until it dies. It just doesn’t work quite as well toward the end.

Someone once said of me, “I don’t think he wants to have money.”

Nonsense. I love having money. Money is time. Money is freedom. Money is power. But the selfish pursuit of maximum income is as powerful a destructive force as uncorrected ignorance. When they link up, it’s apocalyptic.