Climbing the mountain of success Sydney J. Harris
It has long struck me that the familiar metaphor of “climbing the ladder” for describing the ascent to success or fulfillment in any field is inappropriate and misleading. There are no ladders that lead to success, although there may be some escalators for those lucky enough to follow in a family’s fortunes.
A ladder proceeds vertically, rung by rung, with each rung evenly spaced, and with the whole apparatus leaning against a relatively flat and even surface. A child can climb a ladder as easily as an adult, and perhaps with a surer footing.
Making the ascent in one’s vocation or profession is far less like ladder climbing than mountain climbing, and here the analogy is a very real one. Going up a mountain requires a variety of skills, and includes a diversity of dangers, that are in no way involved in mounting a ladder.
Young people starting out should be told this, both to dampen their expectations and to allay their disappointments. A mountain is rough and precipitous, with uncertain footing and a predictable number of falls and scrapes, and sometimes one has to take the long way around to reach the shortest distance.
One needs different tools and the knowledge and skill to use them most effectively- as well as knowing when not to employ them. Most of all, a peculiar combination of daring and prudence is called for, which not all persons possess.
The art of rappelling is important, because sometimes one has to go down a little in order to go up. And the higher one gets, the greater the risk and greater the fall; there is much exhilaration-but little security and less oxygen- in altitude. As many stars and standouts and company presidents have found to their regret, it is often harder to stay there than to get there.
Then, too, one must learn that there is no necessary relationship between public success and private satisfaction the top of the ladder is shaky unless the base is firmly implanted and the whole structure is well defended against the winds of envy and greed and duplicity and demands of one’s own ego. The peak of the mountain is even more exposed to a chilling wind, as well as to a pervasive sense of loneliness. Many may have admired the ascent, but many more, eager to make the same endeavor, are waiting at the foot of the slope to witness an ignominious fall. It is easier to extend good will to those who do not threaten our own sense of worth.
People who are not prepared for failure are not prepared for success; if not for failure, at least for setbacks and slides and frustrations, and the acceptance of the deficits that so often accompany the assets. Ambition untempered by realism will never see the missing rung it falls through on that mythical ladder.
Sydney J. Harris’s essays: Majority of One (1957); For the Time Being (1972); Clearing the Ground (1986) … |