Value, success and Kurt Vonnegut
June 14th, 2004 by Bill
It’s interesting that I should see a diatribe like The Confessions of an Optimistic Underachiever (found on the.sonnetarium). I’ve been mulling over the same sort of thing in recent months too. (I seem to do so cyclically, about every 10 years.)
The conclusion reminds me of something Kurt Vonnegut wrote at the beginning of his novel Mother Night. As best I can recall, “You are what you pretend to be. So you better pretend to be something good.”)
I’ve also recently read The Lazy Person’s Guide to Success by Ernie J. Zelinski. It’s not a great book, but it’s pretty good. And I like some of his key points, such as:
1) Don’t work hard; work smart. There’s no relationship between working hard and success. In fact, a lot of people who work hard go nowhere. The people who get somewhere are the ones who work smart.
2) What is success to you? Corney as it sounds, a lot of money doesn’t necessarily mean a lot of happiness. Money actually brings headaches of its own. The pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of money are not the same thing.
Of course, this take could also be one of those things Kurt Vonnegut would call “comforting lies.†I guess we all have to decide for ourselves. Personally, I’m getting a little tired of a world where the only value is monetary.
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