Success is an Accident

The author of Moneyball was asked to give a commencement speech at Princeton recently and he made this very obvious yet surprising remark to the so called IVY league graduates. To paraphrase - Success in most cases is a series of fortunate events that can be chalked up to dumb luck. I do think that once someone gets lucky it requires intellect to recognize it as such and put your whole effort behind it to maitain momentum and indeed savor the flavor of success. The author Michael Lewis is himself a graduate of Princeton and has since had different careers including a bond salesman and now an author of popular books some that have become a movie. He went on to emphasize that those lucky ones then somehow owe it to themselves and to society to return the favor in the form of helping others achieve what they seek, in most cases success itself. Although an intangible idea the message was to pay it forward. He calls it the graduating generations' responsibilty to take the effort to help others. He wrote a new book called Boomerang with ideas that I get and quoted here - In Greece the banks didn't sink the country. The country sank the banks; Fishermen are a lot like American investment bankers - like bankers, fishers' "overconfidence leads them to impoverish not just themselves but also their fishing grounds"; Countries borrow not only the best practices, but the worst; Nothing lasts forever, even real estate.