Fear of success - wishing and hoping beats arriving

‘May you get what you wish for’ sounds like a fortune cookie promise. In fact it’s an old Yiddish or Arab curse pointing to a truth universally ignored that what we think we want we can’t actually handle. 

  You only have to look at lottery winners to see how the shift from poverty to the nirvana of wealth wrecks lives. Old friends fade away, families get greedy, hangers-on multiply, and the shine wears off the new Porsche/mansion/swimming pool with an empty life of endless vacation stretching ahead. 

   Even where the day job is what rings the bell of success there is a kick-back.  The casualty rate amongst young pop idols is high, with drink and drugs being roped in as defences against the overwhelming attention.   

 Debut writers are especially conflicted since they want their books to be read but are often not temperamentally designed for the publicity hit of a runaway best-seller. Paula Hawkins, whose Girl on a Train hit the publishing and Hollywood heights, talks about feeling vulnerable and exposed by her triumph.

Likewise, Jessie Burton, whose The Miniaturist was another book sensation said in an interview: “Success can be as fracturing to your sense of self as failure: it just traumatises in a less qualified way.” In the midst of a flurry of publicity, she felt paralysed and tormented by feelings of worthlessness. 

   The fraud syndrome, common amongst creative types, is partly to blame. Actress Maggie Smith, a rock-solid talent hewed over decades, voiced a feeling echoed by many other of her peers that she always expected her present job to be her last. The I-don’t deserve-this and am-going-to-be-exposed-as-an-imposter conviction runs deep, however bizarre it sounds to outsiders. Plus an element of fear about their special gift not being within their control. There’s a wonderful story of Laurence Olivier being found in tears in his dressing room, having just given the performance of his career. When asked why, he said he didn’t know how he’d done it, so doubted he could do it again. All that genius and he could never own it.

   The muse is a fragile creature as is luck. Both were regarded in olden times as gifts of the gods, bestowed whimsically and just as capriciously taken back. Humans aiming for the Olympian heights to be on a par with the divine ones were deemed guilty of the sin of hubris and cut down to size. In modern terms, overwheening arrogance contains the seeds of its own destruction. (Though sometimes reading the news one thinks ‘not soon enough.’)

   In shrink-land there is an odd condition known as ‘failure as a success.’ The logic is that helicopter-parents mould their offspring to match their ideal of perfection. All achievements are claimed as the result of their endeavours. For the child to assert their identity they need to be the opposite of what is expected of them. Their behaviour may appear self-destructive and long-term it is. Reacting against is as much of an apron-chain as being submissive. But pro tem screwing up the grand family plan still feels better.

  The other drawback to a dream-come-true is envy. Confronting the green-eyed monster in those on whom the fates have not smiled is scary. Envy is the earliest and most primitive of feelings. The implicit aim is to destroy not the person but the quality arousing the corrosive reaction. Delete good looks or the ability to hit a golf ball or strum like Django Reinhardt and everyone can be BFFs again.

  Failure can be comforting, feel safer, a social asset. The old saying that ‘success has many friends and failure is an orphan’ turns out not to be the total truth. For many, dreaming the dream and travelling hopefully but never arriving can the better option.  

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