This year, I got a birthday gift a few weeks early. At work, I was promoted to the top most technical position in the company.

It is funny how the mind works. I didn’t hanker to the title of a Fellow. I was satisfied with what I had. I can’t say that I had hankered for my old title either. But once I was told that I was being considered for the position, I didn’t want to be rejected. Both my old title and the new one require going through an arduous process before emerging out the other end with the title. The Fellow is even more arduous because it is the highest honor the company bestows on an individual contributor i.e. someone who’s chosen the technical ladder and usually does not manage anybody else. It is funny how the mind works.

John Reith, who is credited for creating the BBC, once said:

“I do not care two hoots or one hoot about honours, and often wish I had never taken one. What I do care about is the injustice of not being given or offered them.“

I was silently thrilled with the honor because of the choices I’ve made. I’m a kid from a backwater college in India, almost entirely self-taught in the field I worked. Many years ago, my peers all told me that I had to go to the US to earn my masters degree which was a necessary step to a sucessful career. I had relinquished that step because I had chosen to marry Shanthala. I remember many nights when I’d lie awake or days I’d be riding to work when a panic would seize me, that my entire career was over. I was still under the influence of Ayn Rand and to not do well in my work, which I so passionately loved, was not easy to make peace with. I knew that my decision to marry her was the right thing, but I was torn asunder between my love for her and my work.

A few years after I joined the company I now work for, I was about ready to quit, because I did not want to be a manager and I was told that there was no other career path. But, luck intervened and I got a chance to pursue a purely technical path. A few years back, I again chose to devote time away from work, to working with a non-profit and then staying at home and caring for Maya. I enjoyed my work and how much time I devoted to it. I didn’t want more, I didn’t want less.

In reflecting back on those choices, I realize how lucky I am. Have always been. I’ve managed to find people who supported me fiercely and steadfastly. My current boss and my previous one have fought many a battle on my behalf. They’ve always supported the choices I’ve made. I remember my ex-boss and close friend telling me during one of my down days that I had always chosen a different path, a path that emphasized relationships rather than my career and that I should be proud of that. My current boss suggested working part time, when I wanted to make time to do something else, and helped me make it work. For my part, I have always tried to over-deliver and that has probably been my saving grace. I’ve done my share of toiling and watching peers chart their career paths while I had the same title, year after year, for there aren’t many incremental steps in a technical ladder. But, I’ve tried to do what I enjoyed, not what would lead me to honors and titles. And for being so lucky as to succeed in doing what I loved, I’m eternally grateful.

Three Stories That Changed Me

As I reflect back on my life, I see how far I’ve come from where I was. As a child, I had but one goal, to top the class. In the process of mastering the grades, I lost sight of the primary goal: learning. I became fiercely competitive and wasn’t satisfied with ever winning, of coming out on top. There was always one more exam coming up, one more competition to win. When I think back on that time, I feel the exhaustion of constantly looking back over my shoulder. As I grew, I consciously labored to walk away from that goal. I didn’t want to be the monkey in Jungle Book singing ”I’ve reached the top and I’ve got to stop and that’s what’s bothering me”.

Three incidents helped me make peace with parting from that way of life.

The first was a story told by a close friend. He’s many years my senior and has worked at some of the best organizations in my industry. He told me of one episode concerning his then boss. His boss had just been featured in the Time magazine as one of the 25 or so innovators in the world or some such thing. The week after that article came out, he and my friend were in a meeting with a man considered a legend in the field. My friend told me how his boss stuttered and stammered his way through the meeting, trying to impress the legend.

The second was an article I read in New York Times, at the height of the dotcom bubble. One man, worth 980 million USD, who had made his money using old school ways, expressed his unhappiness at the propsect of people many years younger than him who had become billionaires on paper. The man considered himself a failure.

The third was a true story from David Edwards’ eye-opening book, “Burning All Illusions”. He writes how Leo Tolstoy went mad at the height of his success. One morning, Tolstoy looked at his face in a mirror and asked himself the question: “Yes, you’ll be greater than Moliere, Chekov and even Shakespeare. You’ll be the greatest writer of all time. So what ?” That he couldn’t answer the question drove him mad and he had to rip apart the fabric of his life and his beliefs to recover his sanity.

The message that I took away from each of these stories is that seeking success as defined by somebody else is not a road to peace or contentment. I had to define what I wanted to make of my life and find some measure of peace in it. There is no end to seeking external recognition. I can be a Fellow today, hanker to be the best Fellow there is in my company, be the best Fellow in my field and on and on and on. The pleasure is in the finding, in the learning, as Feynman put it, not in the knowing, not in the honors.

But more than learning, more than anything else, I strive to be a better human being. I read a dedication in a book about bicycling. The dedication was to the author’s friend and mentor. It read: “For …., whose knowledge was only exceeded by his humanity”. On the day of my birth, that is the epitaph I strive for.

Related posts:

1. Musings From An Airplane
2. Random Musings