Hello!
We are striving, always striving!
For more money.
For fame.
For adulation.
Our restless minds are whipping us daily to achieve more, to acquire more.
Here are some short vignettes for you to think about.
She was beyond good looking. She was a drop-dead, gorgeous, stunning knock-out beauty. She came from nowhere and conquered Bollywood. She displaced the leading ladies and the sirens alike. She was chased by a who’s who of glitterati and allegedly had affairs with leading male stars and producers and directors. It is likely that some ‘leaked’ news of an intimacy because it got them in the news. She was on the cover of Time magazine. Slowly she unraveled. She made allegations against prominent people. She was treated for mental health issues. She gained weight. She lost her looks. One day, her neighbors noticed bottles of milk and newspapers lying uncollected outside her door. When they broke in, Parveen Babi had been dead for three days.
He was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor. He was nominated for the same Oscar award multiple times. Many of his movies were blockbuster hits and some are considered classics. He was named numerous times in The Top 10 Stars of the Year. He appeared on the cover of Life magazine. He was known as a playboy and had affairs with leading ladies like Audrey Hepburn and Grace Kelly. He was the best man at the first wedding of his friend Ronald Reagan. In all this time he had a poorly concealed addiction for the bottle. He was 63 when he slipped and struck his head against a marble table and fell down bleeding. It was four days before William Holden’s body was discovered.
He was one of the richest men in America and perhaps the best-known financier after J. P. Morgan. He amassed a fortune in the New York Stock Exchange before the crash and another one in the post war boom. He was on the cover of Time magazine. He advised presidents routinely. He was close to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and helped him mobilize businessmen and industrialists to cooperate in war production. At its peak America was producing 270 planes per day and a B-24 bomber every 55 minutes; three Liberty ships a day, two destroyers a week, three submarines a week, 120 tanks a day. Germany and Japan simply could not meet this scale of production, and this led to their eventual defeat. He did as much as anyone to help the Allies win World War 2. Despite this, most Americans do not know his name. The largest business school in the world is named after him and, even at that school, most students do not have a clue who he was and what he did. I can personally attest to this because I taught at the Bernard M. Baruch school of business for two years.
At one time he was the best-known executives in America – better known than later stars like Jack Welch and Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. He ran two of America’s largest automobile companies and launched cars that became hugely popular and, later, much loved parts of Americana. He was widely hailed as a future POTUS and would probably have been a shoo-in if he had gone that route. After his business career ended, he was at a loose end. Some business ventures failed. Gradually he disappeared and died of complications from Parkinson’s disease. Most business school students do not recall Lee Iacocca today.
Whatever wealth you have amassed, whatever fame you have struggled to achieve, whatever laurels you have garnered… they will go away. They will all go away.
Does this mean you should not strive to accomplish great things?
Of course not. But strive knowing that the true benefit is not what you ‘get’ but the learning and growth that ensue as the result of that striving.
I will say more about this in future columns.
Peace!
