Does this phrase strike a chord with you? Apparently, it first appeared in Peter Matthiessen’s book, The Snow Leopard, but I came across it quoted in Lindy Elkins-Tanton’s moving memoir Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman. As she puts it, and here she is discussing the feelings of those who get elected to the National Academy of Sciences:
Success and its presumed partner, happiness, are ever-receding.
In other words, however much those who aspire to election feel unhappy each year that passes them by without the desired recognition, yet when it arrives it merely confirms that success doesn’t bring unlimited happiness. She also recognizes it as a feeling associated with, for instance, the award of tenure (in the US system), that feeling of a loss of meaning when the outcome is actually achieved.
Why struggle onward with new scientific discoveries, when only a few people in the world really care? What do I have to work toward now?
I wonder how common that reaction to tenure – or any other measure of success – really is. I know, when I was promoted to Reader (that obscure and now defunct title in the University of Cambridge that, in my day, was the stepping stone between what was still the career grade of Lecturer and full Professor), my reaction was ‘is that it?’ A reflection of the fact that, having worked flat out to establish myself and try to convince myself that I did indeed deserve to be on the Physics faculty, I suddenly wondered if that level of commitment had really been worth it. In time I adjusted, and did not have the same reaction when, a few years later, I got further promoted to Professor. I was simply overjoyed. Nevertheless, that phrase, the desolation of success, did resonate with me when I read it in the Elkins-Tanton book.
It is just another way of referring to the old idea, that it is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. A long-wished-for destination may turn out to be, if not dust and ashes, at the very least less than had been hoped for when it finally turns up. It is as true in academia as anywhere else in life. And, academia being the competitive world that it is, it is also so much easier to remember the things that didn’t work out, compared with those that did. To smart from that rejection letter from the editor of Nature twenty years after the event, or to recall a position that had briefly seemed like your dream opportunity, but which went – naturally unfairly in your opinion – to your lab mate. Schadenfreude points out that in fact the project you didn’t get a chance to take on went nowhere and you were well out of it, but it’s the rejection that stings, however long ago this all took place.
Nevertheless, in terms of the opposite of the desolation of success, maybe one should also consider that there are upsides to failure. After all, would one paper in Nature from 20 years ago really transform a lifetime of research, however wounding the rejection felt at the time. Much of the impact, at least internally, will be how one copes with it. Does it spur one on to better things, to work harder or perhaps change field – or even career to somewhere better suiting your strengths? Or does it prompt an extended period of self-loathing and depression? We are all different in how we cope with such setbacks, and context really matters, so that how we cope with one rejection may bear no relation to our reaction to a different one.
As I indicated above, I certainly felt an element of the ‘desolation of success’ when I’d achieved more than I’d ever dreamt of by mid-career. But earlier, I had responded very positively to a kick in the teeth when failing to get the position I thought was in the bag. I’d been somewhat coasting while waiting (for months) for a formal decision and was stunned by my failure. However, I was so annoyed I thought ‘I’d show them’ and reapplied myself with great vigour, transforming myself from being somewhat idle in the lab to an absolutely determined researcher. Those around me must have been startled since I was too embarrassed to explain my reinvention, the cause of which would have been invisible to them. The upshot of all this was that, far from heading back to the USA as a faculty member, I stayed in the UK, working my way up through the system, starting with a Royal Society University Research Fellowship awarded from its first cohort. Staying in the UK is definitely not something I regret, but it’s curious to think what a key turning point that moment was. Rejection can be good for you – but only sometimes.
I guess the ‘moral’ of this post is to say, success – in whatever field – may not necessarily bring joy, nor failure mean disaster. If failure turns you aside into a more healthy direction (perhaps instead of following the dreams of others for you, but finally pursuing your own) it may be the best thing that ever happened. Or it may not. But do not assume anyone who is a ‘success’ is necessarily happy. They may instead be constantly chasing the next trophy and never feeling satisfied, as there is always another target to aim at.
