Not only is the path circuitous, but there is no point to suggest an end to the line. The arrow keeps pointing further (infinitely?) into the future.
Two things comes to mind.
First, people interested in developing deep skills in which ever vocation(s) they dedicate their time should spend some serious time with Cal Newport and his "career craftsman" philosophy. We do not stumble into our life's true love, unearthing hidden talent we never knew existed, and make a happy-ever-after career success story. Cal has built a strong case against the do-what-you-love-and-you'll-be-a-success fairy tale, eschewing it for guiding people (as a side gig only, he's a computer science professor) in how to work hard - very hard - to develop deep and narrow skills.
According to Cal, we make a decision to get good at something. We work hard at it. We work smart at getting better. We carve niches for ourselves. Over years and years of hard work, we develop expertise. And this expertise, along with the hard work itself, can provide deep and abiding satisfaction. And if we're lucky, it provides a means for supporting oneself and the freedom to pursue one's interests as one sees fit.
A reasonable person might call that outcome success.
But, second, what is success? Is it really an outcome? Too often we think of it as a destination as if it were a platform we land on and upon which we reside forever more. I think we would find that most people we consider successful don't think of it as such a static thing. It's very dynamic. And it's not accurate to use the term in such a general way. I would argue it's just not a precise use of the term.
Perhaps you accomplished a specific thing successfully. You employed strong thinking in an investment decision process that produced an outcome with high returns. That was an example of being successful, but does it define you as a "success." Or say you produced a string of these good outcomes with high returns. Again, those are multiple instances of success, but are you now a "success?"
You can have a thousand such "successes" followed by a single "failure." How are you then labeled? Or you have a thousand failures followed by a single success.
Such labels are meaningless. I'm reminded of Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker profile of Nassim Taleb several years ago. (Click here to read Blowing Up: How Nassim Taleb Turned the Inevitability of Disaster Into an Investment Strategy.) Taleb revered Victor Niederhoffer as one of the world's best traders and a brilliant thinker. Niederhoffer had a respected fund with investors desperate to include their capital in his investments. He had more wealth than most people could hope for.
Niederhoffer had it all. Until he didn't. He "blew up", as traders put it, when the strategy he had used with such success for a decade suddenly didn't work. He lost everything. One day he was a "success" and the next he was a "failure." Well, that would be the description if you chose to think of it in such "destination" terms.
It all brings to mind the story of the Taoist farmer. I had a vague recollection of the tale, and googling it produced this version (from this source):
This farmer had only one horse, and one day the horse ran away. The neighbors came to condole over his terrible loss. The farmer said, "What makes you think it is so terrible?"
A month later, the horse came home--this time bringing with her two beautiful wild horses. The neighbors became excited at the farmer's good fortune. Such lovely strong horses! The farmer said, "What makes you think this is good fortune?"
The farmer's son was thrown from one of the wild horses and broke his leg. All the neighbors were very distressed. Such bad luck! The farmer said, "What makes you think it is bad?"
A war came, and every able-bodied man was conscripted and sent into battle. Only the farmer's son, because he had a broken leg, remained. The neighbors congratulated the farmer. "What makes you think this is good?" said the farmer.
Luck is fleeting. It is a point-in-time result. What we perceive as luck today, we may view as the root of great misfortune tomorrow. The same reasons we might have used to consider a person lucky today we might use to pity him tomorrow.
So goes success, and so the path is circuitous and the arrow points forever further.
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