Essay: "Humility in the face of randomness"

Most people, it seems to me, are obsessed with talent.  They look at someone successful, assume that person is successful for a reason, and work backwards (identifying the exceptional qualities that person has, or the exceptional things they did, that led to that person becoming exceptionally successful).  But is that initial assumption correct?  Are people really successful for a reason?

I have always believed that the differences between people are not as big as we think they are (click here for a great quote on this) and I have always chocked up my own successes and failures, and the successes and failures of others, to randomness, or to factors that have nothing to do with the matter at hand, rather than my skill and intelligence.

For instance, I interviewed with twelve firms for articling positions. They all rejected me, except for the most prestigious one.  And let's be clear - those other eleven firms did not reject me because they thought I was too good for them.  I was just lucky in that one interview, is all.

So it was difficult, after such an experience, to think I was inherently better than someone articling at a "lesser" firm.  And yet how easy it is to forget.  A few months roll by, everyone says they like you, you get some money in the bank, and you're thinking: I deserve this.  Sure I do.  Otherwise, I wouldn't be here would I?  It is amazing how I start to think that I deserve the things I have, and to look down on those who are not so fortunate.

In 1939 the book The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings won the Pulitzer Prize.  It was the bestselling book of that year, and was made into a movie starring Gregory Peck in 1946.  I had never heard of it, or Ms. Rawlings, until I looked it up.  Because you see, 1939 was also the year Detective Comics #27 came out, featuring upon its cover a certain Caped Crusader.

If you had told someone, back in 1939, that Detective Comics #27 would prove to be a more enduring cultural artifact than The Yearling, and not just more enduring, but more important, more influential, and more culturally signifcant, it would have been inconceivable.  How could something like that happen?  It violated every known precept of the universe.  Yet happen it did, and here we are.

The world is, for all intents and purposes, random.  Things happen for a reason, I guess, but there are so many variables we don't understand, that they never happen for the reason we expect. If our predictions ever turn out right, it was like getting a bullseye in the dark: we hit the mark, but we didn't deserve it.

Does Bob Kane (and Bill Finger) really have any right to rub it in with Marjorie Rawlings?  I don't think so.  They didn't expect Batman to be so popular, and if they did, they were crazy, not prescient.  But on the other hand, in hindsight, Ms. Rawlings didn't have much right to turn up her nose at the comic book guys, did she?

We all know we should be humble, that we should remember that where we end up depends on things like job interviews that can turn on luck (or, alternatively, factors that have nothing to do with our ability to actually do the job).  But I think we have an overwhelming need for the universe to be within our control.  We just can't let go.  And if things happen for reasons, than if I am better off than someone I must be better than them, period. It's not that we want to think we're better than the hobo on the street, it just seems easier to accept than the alternative: that we live in a fundamental unpredictable universe.  That's why it's so hard to stay humble when you have a little success.