David Copperfield, Master of the Universe    (comment)
Timestamp: Sunday, March 19, 2006 5:42pm

The entirety of the human world is based upon illusion. Love, justice, death, power, intelligence, strength, happiness, hatred, war, control. None of these things truly are what we believe them to be at most points in our lives. In fact, none of them actually exist.

Great, now that's a bummer! you say. Or, So the hell what?! perhaps. Well, I was recently contemplating this in the context of what it takes to get a job: applying, interviewing, being hired, doing well, getting promoted, etc. Growing up, I was always surrounded by the smart kids, the ambitious kids, but I was never really quite as smart or ambitious as they were. I had no role models for success, and no real way to know whether I was succeeding or not beside the kinds of indicators our society promotes in a general, diffuse sort of way - grades, salary, prestige - most of which I had fervently rejected as a youth.

Children, particularly rebellious anti-establishment children, often do reject these measures of a person's achievement, and for good reason. We all know that grades don't necessarily translate into success, even in the corporate world; and we know that even the people most successful by our collective standards are not necessarily the happiest. And yet, few of us ever completely escape that nagging feeling in the pits of our stomachs, or the quiet voice in the backs of our heads: Maybe I just can't quite cut it. . . .

It's not enough merely to dismiss the way we collectively evaluate our lives. Success, like virtually everything else of human design, is an illusion, a way to make sense of our world, which is actually devoid of love, justice, religion, hatred, tolerance, peace. In truth, our world is a cold, lonely, de facto existence, so there is no true measure of success because there is no such thing. If we did not measure our lives in grades and salaries, we would measure them in happiness and love, which is no better an indicator of achievement: Some of the unhappiest people, who went to the best schools and got the best grades, contribute more to the world than those of us who are the happiest. But then, neither is than an absolute indicator of success.

Understanding the illusory nature of our world can certainly lead to a much happier, less stressful existence. But we all have to fight for the things that we want, so being happier is not necessarily enough. What we should want is another man-made dilemma that we all need to work out for ourselves. But once you've decided what it is you want, understanding the illusions - yours and other people's - of competence, confidence, entitlement, strength, power, etc. that stand between you and your goal, and being able to manipulate those illusions, is what it takes to really succeed.