What does it mean to be ‘successful’?

Published 8:15 pm Saturday, June 13, 2009

Mandy: Do you know why I’m not outrageously rich and wildly successful?

Angie: This seems too easy. I’m going to go against my nature and abstain. It’s early in the column. I don’t want to peak just yet.

Mandy: Are you sure you don’t want to guess? I’ll give you a hint: It’s the same reason you’re not outrageously rich and wildly successful.

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Angie: I regret my earlier decision.

Mandy: It’s because we were born in 1979.

Angie: Um, Mandy, we’re twenty-three and a half, remember? That means we were born in …

Mandy: 1986, I got your math back. But it’s time to be honest with our readers and ourselves. We are nearing our fourth decade.

Angie: Why start with that business now? This column is based on truthiness and made up facts. For example, I love to run long distances.

Mandy: The only time I’ve seen you run was when that flock of birds attacked you.

Angie: They were seagulls. I had no choice but to run far away. Besides, the only part of you that’s ever ran is your nose.

Mandy: No fair, I have allergies. Do you pick on the optically challenged too?

Angie: You have glasses, and I pick on you. But none of these reasons is behind your mediocrity? It’s your birth year? Cause you are one Bluetooth earpiece away from clipping your cell phone on your belt.

Mandy: Yes, in “Outliers: The Story of Success,” Malcolm Gladwell argues that when and where you were born can lead to as much opportunity for success as talent and hard work.

Angie: An outlier is “something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body; a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample.”

Mandy: You dropped some serious dictionary on us.

Angie: Webster-style.

Mandy: Gladwell, a staff writer for “The New Yorker,” gives us a different view of success.

Angie: In “Outliers,” he is saying that nobody gets to the top by themselves. Everyone is subject to lucky breaks, aka, opportunities.

Mandy: It’s a marriage of clichés: After a village raises a child, that child needs to raise himself up by his bootstraps.

Angie: Gladwell challenges our entire culture’s idea that hard work alone will bring about an individual’s desired results. Not everyone can be president, or an astronaut, or a prima ballerina.

Mandy: Or write amazing book review columns, but sometimes they do anyway.

Angie: But it’s not just about being in the right place at the right time either. There is hard work involved, 10,000 hours of hard work. According to Mr. Gladwell, it’s a rule.

Mandy: Do you think we’ve reached 10,000 reading hours? Are we pros yet?

Angie: You want me to do math?

Mandy: Right. I got this. Let’s average an hour a day since we were 12.

Angie: Sounds about right.

Mandy: So, we have 6,205 hours. A little over half way.

Angie: I’d say that’s at least semi-pro.

Mandy: Add us together and we make one pro.

Angie: He uses The Beatles to demonstrate the 10,000-hour rule. They played for eight hours a day in Hamburg before making an album.

Mandy: We’re on our way to becoming The Beatles of reading. We’re the Hamburg Beatles!

Angie: Does that make us bigger than Jesus?

Mandy: You’re definitely John.

Angie: Gladwell wants to shine a light on our preconceived ideas of achievement. No one rises to the top alone. There are no hardships man overcomes solo. He’s saying that every area of your life can either give you opportunities or take them away.

Mandy: Being passionate and somewhat obsessed about what you love is the first step. You will naturally gravitate toward these prospects. But your environment and generation also affect your odds of success. There’s nothing you can do about the latter. Which is why I’m a genius living an average life. Curse you, 1979. If only I had been born in 1955 and had access to a computer.

Angie: You want to be Steve Wozniak? You don’t know anything about operating systems or dancing with stars.

Mandy: I was talking about Bill Gates.

Angie: So you won’t be signing up for Dancing With the Freeborn County Stars?

Mandy: That could be my opportunity; maybe I am a prima ballerina.

Angie: I hope you are. It would make the pink tutu less awkward.

Mandy and Angie live moderately successful lives in Albert Lea. You can contact them at bookendscolumn@gmail.com.

Author:

Malcolm Gladwell

ISBN-13: 9780316017923

List price: $19.95

Publisher: Little, Brown & Co.