‘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.
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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