Success vs. Joy

- XXXV -

Resisting Corruption

At times I’ve lost touch with reality. It is like those company bosses that fall victim to complacency and forget where they were when they embarked on their career. A CEO might forget the time he worked as a door-to-door salesman 20 years ago. The mind is indeed a source of wonder. We remember what we choose to remember and forget the rest. As a line from the famous song The Boxer by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel goes, “all lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.”

Reality has a strange way of creeping up on you even if you choose to conveniently forget it. Corruption seeps through insidiously.

I succumbed when I wanted to merely make money out of the matches I played. I wanted to maximize the returns I was making on the investment of a lifetime. I was overcome with acquisitiveness. I thought the car I drove, the house I lived in, and the clothes, the shoes, and the wristwatch I would wear defined my social identity. In the process, I lost touch with reality and I forgot that which brings me joy from within. My very nature was slowly being sucked out of me; my lifestyle was becoming fragmented and dissipated.

Chapter XXXIV :: Chapter XXXVI