A few days ago I had a conversation with Sonam about “keeping up.”
The theme was that while it sucks not to get the best score or into the most prestigious program or school or whatever, this disappointment only looks like it limits your options. In fact, it expands them.
An “A” on the test or going to Harvard or the job at Google might be fine in and of themselves, but all are part of a system that survives on convincing you the status they offer makes life better and brings with it validation.
(Brief digression. Few things drive us so much as the validation we did not get when we were kids. The money, fame, or likes we pursue are meant to pat us on the head and say, once and for all, “yes, you are the good child.”)
But if you always succeed according to the known metrics of a system that places machine-like performance above humanity, you are in danger of losing the very qualities you need even to succeed even within that system, let alone outside of it.
O.K. Sure, I want my doctor to have passed their exams. But if they are such geniuses and achievers and have suffered no setbacks in life they will not be able to minister to my ailments and fears, real and imagined. Indeed, part of the reason med schools have to teach bedside manner is that so many of their rock star students never had to look in the mirror of life and say, “that hurt.”
And if you want to work and live more outside of the system which, more and more describes our entrepreneurial economy anyway, your odd or unusual doings, the path you can take which is yours alone, is your true resource.
Thus to see “not getting in” as a chance to be better than those who skated along or to find the path that best serves you is a practical way to make the most of dispaointment.
Besides, while the familiar has its place, the last thing you want is for someone to meet you for the first time who thinks they have met you in someone else already.
(Later today: Dear Harvard . . .