A belief that leads to miserable artists and entrepreneurs
The legendary Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village. Photo by Ajay Suresh.
I came across a plaintive blog post by a struggling entrepreneur. “God,” she said to the Internet, “Why won’t you send your blessings to my business?”
Yesterday, I wrote about how we can succeed with something if we stick with it and refuse to entertain the possibility that we don’t have what it takes. But that’s about our own skill and persistence. We run into trouble when we think we can control what other people do if we just try hard enough or show up long enough…and if that is the case, controlling the actions of an almighty deity would seem to be to be off the menu as well.
The reality is that no one owes us anything — not God, not our parents, not our children, not even our fans. If we expect accolades, we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. We can’t even expect to make a living doing what we love. If we believe that we are entitled to this, we will be miserable.
I can do the work to become an expert in my field, but that doesn’t mean that anyone else should care. I’ll only get a job if my skills and knowledge can be valuable to someone else in a demonstrable, measurable way.
I may try out for the school play after a year of acting classes and voice lessons only to lose my desired role to someone prettier or more charismatic. That’s the way it goes.
The Coen brothers’ film Inside Llewyn Davis is the story of a struggling folk singer in the early 1960s New York City folk scene. Throughout the film, a big break could be on the horizon for him — but it might not be. The protagonist has placed all his eggs in the basket of being a professional musician, as so many do, and the payoff seems to be drifting farther away from his grasp. I’ve seen this happen in real life. There is no magic, just reality.
Actually, a few folks who cut their teeth playing folk music in Greenwich Village clubs did make it big. Really big — one of them was Bob Dylan. Global recognition happens at the intersection of preparation and huge amounts of luck. If that’s the only thing you are after, you will be miserable; chances are, you won’t reach that goal, and reaching the goal of global fame seems to uniformly lead to misery anyway.
Most of us are better off aiming for a career like Dave Van Ronk’s. Van Ronk was a revered folk singer who was already a fixture of the Greenwich Village folk music scene when Dylan came along. He was a huge influence on Dylan and many others. He was never incredibly famous, but he was an incredible musician. He couldn’t control how many people bought his records or whether they would flock to see him at large venues, but he became an ever-more-accomplished singer, guitarist, and recording artist while mentoring generations of others.
It’s understandable that we want God to show up like the fairy godmother in Cinderella and give us everything we’ve ever wanted. That’s like my middle schoolers who say stuff like, “I’ve been working on this problem for five whole minutes and I still don’t have the answer.” It’s hard to let go of our childlike (and sometimes childish) understanding of the world.
We want what we want, when we want it — that doesn’t mean we’re going to get it. We still need to put in the work. And sometimes we put in the work, day after day, year after year, and we don’t receive the fame and fortune we hoped for. It isn’t fair, but that was never the promise of existence.
If we want to make a living, we’ve got to find a way to contribute something that someone else values more than the money they will give us, whether as an employer or a customer. That may not line up with the exact activity that we wish to spend most of our time doing. That doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us or with the world. Those are simply the rules of the game we’re all playing. We can choose to see that as unjust and lose all faith, or we can adapt and enjoy life on its own terms. That’s another decision we have control over.