Outliers, Left Out of Success?

I just finished reading the acclaimed bestseller, Outliers, The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. It is a fascinating read with interesting and controversial insights into what breeds success in such diverse groupings as professional hockey players to entrepreneurs like Bill Gates to airline pilots to ethnic groups who score highest in mathematical scores.

What a load it has taken off my shoulders! Here I was blaming my lack of success on my reluctance to work hard and the total absence of dedication to any job that requires more than a passing effort. No, according to Gladwell it is simply a matter of the timing of my birth. Without giving to much away of the book or it’s conclusions, the hypothesis is that children who are enrolled in school whose birth dates are closer to the cutoff date for school registration in September are faced with the undeniable fact that their maturation and their intellectual capacity was not equal to those they were in class with. This then becomes a self fulfilling prophecy of not achieving the standards of his classmates and leads him down the path of moral rectitude, substance abuse and an ultimately death; or a career as a lawyer.

Being an October child I was enrolled in school almost a year before some of my classmates were. This part of my upbringing was no surprise to me. Having the bejesus pounded out of me in the playground by a goon who was 5 inches taller and outweighed me by 30 pounds was nothing new. But I didn’t have the wherewithal to inquire about his date of birth to verify this hypothesis or not. I was too busy just trying to avoid that long hanging bit of saliva he had dangling from his lips as he held me down. The thought still sends shivers down my back, I was never sure if he was going to be able to suck it back up to his mouth without losing control of it.

I always thought that I had some certain level of superiority over my classmates because I was younger than they were. But according to this new outlook on education and age, I couldn’t have been more mistaken. I had been bred for failure.

Marketing a book like Outliers, especially one that has all the elements of something extremely boring, it helps to have a bit of controversy behind it. Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, published in 2005 was one that had some spicy racial overtones to it’s ideas. It did generate respectable sales figures for the authors (I wonder what month they were born in) and spent almost a full year on best seller lists. Freakonomics was essentially about theoretical economics with some drug dealing and crime statistics thrown in. It had the capacity to be as boring as counting ceiling tiles, but they transcended that. Gladwell has taken a similar approach. A lot of the highlights or more controversial bits do have racial elements to them because after all, the main thrust is to sell books and nothing sells books like some old good racial controversy.

While there are many valid points he proposes in his book, he does leave one particular definition unexplained. He never truly defines what he refers to as successful. He certainly profiles those who are financially successful to those who are intellectually successful, but he never really does focus on what that definition should be. He seems to waffle between the financial and the intellectual but in the end leans towards the financial as to which one carries the most merit.

By no description am I a professional hockey player or a mover and shaker in industry, but I have been a published writer for over twenty years and I feel there is some degree of success in just that fact. There is no denying the fact that for the most part writing is not a lucrative venture, but I have had many financially successful people tell me that they wished they had the ability to write as seemingly effortlessly (I won’t tell them the truth) as I.

I guess in the end, the definition of success really does rest within your own mind. Just remember you are as successful as the next guy; as long as the next guy is not a professional hockey player or Bill Gates.

Treasured Memories

Many, many years ago when I was really young, I was playing with my G.I. Joe’s at our house out near the Floating Bridge and the Flat Rocks (almost sounds like a Lennon lyric doesn’t it?). I vowed to myself that I would remember that moment in time forever. Why? I am not too sure.

It was a beautiful fall day, but that is not enough to sway a child to remember a particular day; in fact when you are that young, every day is beautiful. I was alone, if one can be truly alone with a platoon of plastic soldiers surrounding you. But for some reason I scrunched my eyes shut and repeated to myself, “I will remember this moment forever.” And I have.

I remember the day itself. I remember the coldness felt when the warmth from the sun disappeared as it slipped behind a cloud in the sky. I remember the knees in my pants soaking up the moisture from the soil where I knelt at the base of the rock-face. I remember my platoon sergeant asking me how we will ever get up to the top of the cliff without getting wiped out by enemy fire. Okay, so maybe I remember too much at times.

This was not a moment that was born out of trauma or tragedy or triumph. Times like those seem to be easily recalled without effort. I remember being at the Royal Winter Horse Show when JFK was shot; in my dorm at school when a master came breezing into our room with the news that RFK had been shot in Los Angeles; and being at our cottage at Grippen Lake in the summer of ‘69 watching Neil Armstrong step onto the surface of the moon on a crappy little 13" black and white TV with a coat hanger antenna.

I am sure there are a number of people who could tell me why this memory stamp has stayed with me. Maybe it truly was just a moment that held all of my childhood memories together. Maybe it is an amalgamation of several memories that my brain has reconstructed for my own general well being. Or maybe it is compensating for the memories that have been blocked. In all honesty, there are huge gaps in my memories as a child.

I started thinking about this memory thing before Hallowe’en one year. The girls were setting up a display at our front door for shelling out. They had come up with a pirate theme and needed everything to do with pirates. We had a Jolly Roger hanging on the wall, a fog machine to lend its’ sinister effect of the swirling mists of time. Stephanie was dressed as a swashbuckler, complete with sword and a sinister “Argh-h-h,” that pirates are wont to say. The only thing needed was a treasure chest filled to the brim with treats and she knew just where to find it.

In the early summer of 1989, I had been strolling through an antique sale and came across a chest that had a domed top, with leather handles and pine ribbed inlays. If ever there was a pirate treasure chest, this was it. I loaded it in the back of the Jeep and brought it home to show my wife.

That weekend we decided there should be a treasure hunt at the cottage compound, complete with a treasure for the kids. My wife then made up an authentic looking treasure map, with clues and scary items scattered all over it, and stained it with tea to give it an antique look. My brother and I loaded up on untold treats that would fill the chest.

When the day arrived, all the kids in the compound were gathered together and began the long march around the property following the instructions on the map. As this was going on, we loaded the treasure chest onto our boat and headed across the lake to Snake Island, alternately known as Treasure Island. This weekend it was Treasure Island. We had buried it under some branches and leaves and headed back to the shore.

When we got there, there was a small army of kids dressed in as pirates, with kerchiefs covering some heads and eye patches dotting a few faces. They had their trusty swords at the ready and were gathered around their Jolly Roger standard awaiting us. As we walked up to them they used their swords to point to the island as their next destination as mandated by their map. We rounded up all the spare boats that we could and loaded everyone on board.

Once on the island, everyone was gathered together and the clues were read aloud. Everyone walked to a clearing in the center of the island where the older kids saw the pile of branches and moved them away to reveal the hidden chest. As the kids murmured excitedly and gathered closer, the lid was raised. What followed was not expected at all. The group of children fell into a stunned silence as they saw the opened chest which overflowed with candies and toys. That lasted for maybe a few seconds before they all exploded in a massive scramble for the treats.

That treasure chest in the intervening years has sat unused in a storage area until that night a few months ago. Again it was filled to the rim with treats but with an added ghostly hand reaching out of the candies beseeching the young trick-or-treaters to beware. When the evening was over and the lid closed on the treasure chest once more, Stephanie had sheathed her sword and argh’d her last argh for the night. She started to smile and told us that although she was only two the summer of the Great Treasure Hunt of Grippen Lake, it was probably the fondest and most distinct memory she has had of her childhood.

So maybe that is what forms our lasting memories. Traumas, tragedies and historical events and sometimes even scrunching your eyes together to remember a precise moment in time - all can give you those memories, but often the ones that stay with you just happen.