Life in the Middle

There's a business story that I'd like to see quietly shredded in the editor's office:

The overnight success.

Not that they don't exist. I know there are entrpreneurs with rockets on their shoes who decide to launch pet rocks, cheap computers or gourmet chocolate chip cookies and then watch as they are shocked - shocked, mind you - at the market's ardent embrace.

Unfortunately, those stories are as inspirational as the ringing of a slot machine and ultimately as demoralizing.

First off, most of those overnight successes aren't. What the journalists leave out are the many hours of preparation and moments of failure, the whacked out decisions, the shouting matches, the countless humiliations, and the spouses and relatives who wondered if Ed or Mary was ever going to wake up and fly right.

But even if those sad preliminaries didn't happen, the overnight success story is often deceptive. It implies that people should swing for the fences when, in most cases, going for base hits and bunts is wiser.

The sudden successes also carry a message that is less than pleasant. "What's wrong with you?" is hidden in the subtitles. If this character can pull off a mega-hit, why aren't you at least within striking range?

It's odd because the news media normally tend to go for the negative stories at the expense of the positive ones. The exception is their overnight success gushers. That habit is misleading for while journalists like the extremes, life is usually lived in the middle. Don't tell us about the huge failures or rapid victories. Reveal instead how a person has built a reasonably successful career without being imprisoned by a monomaniacal desire to make more, more, more. Explain how this was done while being a decent spouse and parent.

Life in the middle has a nobility that does not exist at the far sides. The ability to maintain that nobility is one of the major challenges of life. It deserves to be studied and even honored.

And those successes don't happen overnight.