I was born the heiress of a bustling, multinational enterprise and was promptly assigned the role of a princess. I reviled the idea of it—the subtle and feminine art of princess-hood was just not for me. In its place, I wanted to be one of two things when I came of age: A hero, or maybe if that didn’t work out—a king, like my father—two childish inclinations spawned from a budding love of books. I’ve since spent my life examining these mysterious compulsions, and the sum of the clues I’ve found thus far compose my ideas on the purpose and meaning of life.

In the realm of literature, a hero is a figure who overcomes great odds in pursuit of a goal. It is no accident then that we relate so well to the hero’s narrative. Savvy artists, fiction writers, and advertisers are well-aware of this dynamic and exploit it to connect our ideas about purpose and identity. We the readers celebrate a hero’s triumphs, lament their failures, and mourn their deaths every bit as much as anyone who ever lived in the flesh. We connect with and savor characters who live well-crafted lives.

The first man I ever loved this way was a convict who had lived the formative years of his life as a prisoner in the gallows of a ship. His name was Jon Valjean. After being freed from prison, he fled checkered past, made a name for himself as a wealthy factory owner, and later a mayor, and was beloved by his township. Years of suffering had softened his demeanor—he had become a generous and merciful pillar of the community who held a soft spot in his weary heart for the weak and disenfranchised. Even as a child, I knew I was marked to inherit my father’s businesses, and I looked forward to my chance to be a beloved leader.

Indeed, there is some part in everyone that wants to be a hero, whether we realize it or not. The ultimate purpose of our lives is to discover what kind of hero we will be for the world, for our communities, and for ourselves. Only some of us will fare well in this herculean task.

When I find myself in hard times, I sometimes consult the conventional wisdom of motivational speakers. The world’s forefront motivational speakers often attempt to dispel common misconceptions in pursuing the heroic dream and its implications. Speaker Zig Ziglar, for example, in a more pro-adversity outlook, posits that we should “honor and appreciate the fact that work is a drag,” because if it weren’t, “no one would be willing to pay us to do it.” He also says that, “sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.” Speaker Tony Robbins, in a similar fashion, emphasizes the journey not the destination. He boldly declares that “that’s the one word that will make you happy… progress…that just the momentum will make you happy…” because “…we all have to keep growing to feel alive.” While these statements make for potent rhetoric, I believe they fall short of capturing the essence of work.

I believe the modern preoccupation with finding the right careers is just our earthly attempt of defining our very own heroic plots. We hit snags because we are simply not literary figures and cannot structure our pursuits to match theirs. The stories of our lives are never as clean or perfectly orchestrated. They are spun of countless plots and existential problems which intensify over time. A satisfying conclusion is never a guarantee, even when all lives must end in death. At some point, we must come to terms with the confines of time and the limits of our human bodies. Sometimes, we must endure the awkward juxtaposition of black-and-white ideals against the mature sensibility of moral grey areas in our lines of work.

My gleeful naïveté shielded me from the ugly realities of business enterprise. It took me time to realize that not all individuals in positions of power were of Jean Valjean’s moral caliber. In fact, they are often temperamental, selfish individuals who succeed because they know the highest heights cannot be achieved without horrific sacrifices. These were harsh revelations for my young mind, and for the first time, I feared for the future. Could I win the crown, and still salvage enough decency left to be considered a hero? Could I be a king without also being a monster?

The prospect of failure is sometimes so terrifying that the hero in us is conquered by fear, which we disguise as practicality to spare our egos. Some of us might one day decide that the risk of failure is too great to undertake, and we neglect the precious dreams we bore as children. The pressure of staying afloat in a competitive field drove my father to mistreat the people closest to him, and the fear of one day doing the same scared me away from pursuing a formal education in entrepreneurship.

When we realize that what is ideal is often also difficult and treacherous, we become passive in our approach to life to avoid the pain of failure. If I don’t even attempt to be great, we rationalize, then I will save myself from the sting of letting myself down. From the safety of mediocrity there is certainly little height from which to fall. However, the truth is that we will die one day, and whether we are remembered or not depends on how close we flew to the sun.

A kind of distinction awaits those workers among us who somehow manage to conquer their fears and achieve wild success in the real world. We call these people exceptional. We collectively equate them with wealth, fame, and sometimes even with divinity. We assume that they have achieved perfection every possible area of life, even if we subconsciously understand that it couldn’t possibly be true. It doesn’t matter—these are the knights who have slayed the dragon, rescued the princess, and returned home to revel in the glory of it all—and we’d rather not imagine them in any other way.

I believe we place our heroes on pedestals to excuse ourselves from accountability. We might observe that only a few humans have enjoyed the kind of success that warrants publicity. The widespread concept that famous people are fundamentally superior is profoundly flawed and poses significant psychological harm. We wrongfully speculate that not having achieved fame must mean that we were not destined for success. Therefore, we simply cannot be expected to do any better—after all, we are only the hapless bystanders of this epoch, no more, and no less.

The greatest disadvantage of this line of thinking is that it maims us. Because of it, many of us elect careers because they are stable, and not because they mean something to us. Surrendering culpability to destiny forces us to give up our greatest power—the confidence to decide and direct the outcome of our lives. We experience this kind of self-assuredness in abundance as children, but it dwindles with age. In the complete absence of it, we have no hope of reaching our ideals.

If work is our attempt to reach our ideals, then how can we discern how well we are doing? A common perspective involves wealth. In the modern world, it is moot to envision success apart from wealth or power—the two nearly synonymous. Some very valid reasoning supports this line of thinking. Commercial wealth affords us power and freedom to make decisions. It also frees us from unnecessary suffering—like hunger, or sickness—which distracts us from productivity. Are we to believe then, that being a hero is simply about amassing wealth and status? If life is just about reaching great heights, then what do we do when we get there?

It would confound many of us to discover that individuals at the top of the global economic hierarchy– the Bill Gateses, Elon Musks, and Oprah Winfreys—often struggle with severe depression throughout their lives. My father was a phenomenally successful business executive who had much more disposable income than he knew what to do with. He founded a successful computer engineering firm in partnership with groups like Sony, Microsoft and NASA—it was a lifelong dream that he broadly achieved the age of forty.

I remember him as a restless soul who struggled with greed and professional resentment for most of his adult life, despite his glowing achievements, his impressive collection of luxury estates, and the veneration of the business community. If we are to assume that life is just about professional success, then what could possibly cause a person like my father to fall victim to depression?

My father spent most of his adolescence pining for wealth, status, and recognition. As an adult, he found it easier to achieve than he expected. After years of confusing heroism with vanity, a peculiar feeling caught up to him. He had grown bored of relishing in his victories, even the ones he once considered hard-fought. He might have sensed that there was something greater to life, which he felt intuitively but was never truly able to grasp. The solution for his emptiness slipped through his fingers—and with mounting discomfort and nowhere left to turn, he directed his frustration at his family.

Growing up, most of us assume that if we one day attain our wildest dreams, that we will be happy forever—but the value of life is greater than the sum of our achievements. My father caught up with every one of his precious pursuits and yet never found peace. In the process of chasing his dreams, he relinquished his love for people and his desire to be loved for who he was, instead of what he had accomplished. He made the fatal mistake of confusing vanity with success, and he was miserable for it.

I believe that happiness is an excellent metric by which we can measure our progress in our lives and is built into each of us for that very reason. The happiest people in the world enjoy their work and invest themselves in it, but do not allow it to consume them. They don’t forget to honor their inner heroes. They give back to their communities, they don’t forfeit their friends, and don’t forget to love their children.

Sometimes when I feel lost in my life, I reflect on my father’s mistakes and realize that my views on work and life don’t always find common ground. In my formative years I buried my nose into books with rich plots, a consequence of having two socialites for parents who were rarely at home. Much of who I am today was shaped under the wisdom and custody of literature. Compared to the brilliant voices of classical authors and colorful characters, I find the daily experience of living to be tragically lackluster and shallow.

For a young person with an active mind, the frustration of boredom is an ever-looming threat. It was hard for me to confront the sobering reality that the world is not quite like what my favorite stories led me to believe. There are times when, like Jean Valjean, I feel like a slave in a galley, and wonder if a day will come when I will be freed. It was hard for me to realize my father wasn’t successful, even if he was fabulously rich. It was hard to watch his empires collapse under the weight of his vices, and to witness his fortunes vanish along with the throne which would have one day been mine. It was even harder to emerge from the revelation without bitterness. Sometimes, I give in to cynicism and doubt that dreams have any purpose at all, that suffering has any purpose at all, and that any of the work I have ever done means anything at all.

Like my father, I am an ambitious executive type who will sometimes disregard my own views about life to succeed. Also, like my father, I struggle in my personal relationships. There is a person in me who adores people, and who wants nothing more than to be of service to others, and who has held this dearly for most of her life. Yet, I often feel disconnected from my peers, and worse—incompatible with humanity as a whole.

The realm of work is clean and simple. As they say in business, you reap what you sow—but people are fluid concepts, difficult to control, ever-changing and impossible to grasp. Working hard and being smart will earn you a respectable living in any industry you choose, but loving other people doesn’t mean you’ll be loved in return.

I stopped having heroes because I believe that amazing people cannot live and breathe outside of fiction–for me, and for now, they exist only between the covers of books. I may never be an exception to the rule, and I may never be a wealthy, powerful philanthropist—but I can’t stop myself from wanting to be one anyway.

I don’t believe human purpose is fiction—even if life sometimes functions like a narrative. We can achieve our wildest dreams not just through winning life’s inevitable contests, but by remembering that there is more to heroism than polishing trophies. As we take pride in our work and contribute our gifts to the world around us, we grow closer the heroes we always dreamed we could be. If we discover ourselves in the process, then maybe we can stand to be happy about it too—even if we never get the crown.

 

 

 

 

 

 

WORKS CITED

 

 

 

Robinson, Tony. “Nothing You Get Will Ever Make You Happy.” Sources of Insight, Meier,

J.D., 15 February 2014, http://sourcesofinsight.com/nothing-you-get-will-ever-make-you-happy/.

 

“Zig Ziglar Quotes.” BrainyQuote, BrainyMedia Inc, 2018. 2 November 2018.

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/zig_ziglar_381974