The pursuit of happiness

In the 80s, we lionised corporate titans - the people who made the machines that symbolised the rise of the comfortable middle class - cars, washing machines, aeroplanes.  Everyone read Lee Iacocca's eponymous biography "Iacocca", and how he rescued Chrysler.  Everyone followed Jack Welch, the man who grew General Electric's revenue from 12b USD to 410b USD.

In the 90s, we fell in love with personal computing and later, the internet.  Bill Gates with Microsoft, Steve Jobs, in his first tempestuous incarnation with Apple, and Jerry Yang, who helped us organise the internet and gave us email on Yahoo, before Google emerged.

Then in the 2000s, we celebrated financiers.  These days, most people only remember the financial crisis of 98-99, but before that, everyone thought Alan Greenspan, the Fed Chairman, was wiser than Yoda in keeping interest rates low, and the CEOs of the big banks, like Sandy Weill of Citi and Richard Fuld of Lehman Brothers, could do no wrong, leading their organisations to year after year of increasing profits.

Now, we celebrate the startup guys who produce so-called unicorns - the giants like Jack Ma at Alibaba, Jeff Bezos at Amazon, Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook, and others like Anthony Tan at Grab, Daniel Ek of Spotify and so on.  News of the latest up-round of financing, or their IPOs, valuing their companies in the billions, floods our news feeds!

I came across an article on Zoom, the web conferencing company which recently IPOed, and is currently valued at about 25b USD.  Zoom's founder, Eric Yuan, owns about a fifth of that - wow!  His story is one of great determination, overcoming difficulties and challenges.  He was being paid well in his previous job, but he didn't like the product that he had come up with for Cisco (Webex).  He is quoted as saying "The purpose of life is to pursue happiness, and I was not happy."  So he left and set up Zoom, and the rest is history.

The headline of the story essentially suggests that Eric Yuan left his 6-figure job because he wasn't happy, and that pursuing happiness made him a billionaire.  I don't know about that.  I found it interesting that Eric Yuan is quoted elsewhere in the article, saying that Cisco Webex is still using the "buggy code" that he wrote for them 20 years ago, implying that his product is far superior.  Cisco Webex naturally denies that.  It feels a little like when I leave one job for another, and then look back say, yeah my previous place was horrible, this present place is great!

Let me be clear - I do not know Eric Yuan at all.  He is certainly a successful businessman.  He could be an amazing guy.  But I highly doubt that he is successful because he pursued happiness.  Rather, he is happy because he pursued success - and obtained it.  Let's suppose he started Zoom and it failed.  It seems doubtful to me that anyone would write an article and say - Eric Yuan - he left his job, failed and is very happy!

No.  Based on the article, it seems he left his job, succeeded, looked back at his previous job, threw shade at the quality of their product, and concluded - yeah I'm happy!  But... what if he didn't succeed?  What if his product was not as good?  What if he made less than his previous "high six-figure" salary?  Would he still be happy?  Or was he happy only because he was winning?

What kind of happiness is that?  The kind of happiness that is dependent on what's happening.  The "happiness of happenings" is... fragile.  Look at the list of people and companies I started this blog entry with.  Iacocca was successful with Chrysler in the '80s.  But by 1995, Chrysler was weak enough for Iacocca himself to try to team up with Kirk Kerkorian to try to takeover it (unsuccessfully).  By 2009, Chrysler was bankrupt.  The list goes on.  General Electric is, right now, going through a crisis.  Yahoo is a fraction of what it used to be.  Steve Jobs was fired by his own company (though he did return later).  Lehman Brothers is no more.

So.  Is the happiness of happenings the kind of thing we really want to build our lives on?  Are we only happy when we're winning - winning against our competitors, winning against our peers and neighbours, winning against our old selves?  Are we only happy when we're getting promotions, or new jobs, or when our children are doing better than others, or when we have nicer holidays?

If not, what then is true happiness?  I think most of us, including myself, often look in the wrong direction.  We're looking for happiness, when we really should be looking for purpose.  If someone had told me, Mr X is successful because he pursued purpose (as opposed to happiness), I would have totally bought it.  Because purpose is not dependent on the vagaries of chance and circumstance.

Not that many people look at the charity sector and tell themselves, ooh, success!  Because the truth is, it is very very hard to lift people out of the situation which causes them to require charity to begin with.  Could be a physical or mental disability, could be a lack of opportunity for education and employment, could be a messed up social circle and family.  It's just hard.  Yet the people who work in the charity sector are fulfilled.  Because even if they don't see literal success, they're fulfilling their purpose.

But we also see lots of these people burn out. How many of us volunteer at one event, then say, see you next year.  How many of us serve for a couple of months, or even a few years, and then conclude, nope, I don't have energy for this.  Goodness knows, I've often felt that way myself. 

Because even noble purpose is sometimes not enough.  We can't fill up our own lives.  Just like an empty mug can't fill itself, someone needs to fill us.  We need to be filled up with... something.  Something that endures, something that keeps being replenished, something that actually meets all our needs so that it overflows out of us.  And we all yearn for that something and look for it, because that's how we're created as human beings.  We want to look for fulfilment, for purpose, for... for lack of a better phrase, true happiness.

Over the next couple of months, I've set up a series of regular meet-ups with a bunch of friends as we work together to figure out how we can serve the underprivileged in our region in our small, but hopefully meaningful and sustainable way.  I trust that we'll find for them, and ourselves, not just purpose, and not merely the happiness that comes from happenings - but true happiness, the sort that really endures!

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