Good Work Is the Key to Good Fortune

That damned Neil Peart.

I'm keeping to a Neuro-Linguistic strategy by modeling my behavior on the people I admire, but watching Neil's extensive video on drumming called "A Work in Progress" has given me pause.

Here's a sample for your consideration:



The question it leads me to ask myself is this: what aspect of my own life have I mastered the way he has?

A favorite Rush lyric of mine is: "Good work is the key to good fortune." Along that line, I have invested far too much of my life energy in mastering the art of screenwriting, with only middling resuts so far. All that work hasn't led to anything perceptible yet, causing me to wonder whether this investment in technique has been for naught.

But the thing about chasing dreams is... it's not just about the having. The getting matters as much or more. I think that's the real reason why people who win the lottery are never happy. The money they've acquired is found money -- they expended no real effort to obtain it. While it sounds like paradise ("What, are you crazy? Send a little of that cash my way!") experience has proven again and again that people become reckless or dissolute in the face of random good luck. Good work that leads to good fortune... that's another story.

Joseph Campbell once said that a lot of people climb the ladder of success only to discover that it's standing against the wrong wall. Because we assign material equivalents to the degree of success we achieve at our jobs and not mastery or joy in our art/skill, that dollar reductionism leads to radical disjunctures on the perceived values in our society. The dash for cash takes up all our time and water-cooler conversations, while our freetime is gobbled up by mind-numbing distractions and passive entertainment. And then we claim we have no time to learn to ski or to fly or to parachute jump. Or to learn French or to cook or to travel the world.

And then you shadow a guy like Neil who avidly cooks, rides around the world on his bicycle or motorcycle, rock climbs, composes lyrics, and oh -- happens to be the best drummer in the whole world. Imagine: he can say without too much argument that he is the best at what he does on the planet. How many people would love to say that... about anything?

Henry David Thoreau once promoted a career advice as follows: "Make your living by loving." I believe he would readily acknowledge that Neil Peart examplifies the true spirit of this motto.

It is irrelevant in the end whether you like Rush's music or not. The critical point here is that he mastered a skillset and turned it into a career which allows him the freedom to pursue his other interests. Combined, they add up to an active life of passionate dreamchasing. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what this website is all about.

Take a look around and you'll see what I mean. We glorify fame and the riches that come with it. But few of us focus our attention where it really matters: on the grunt work of skill mastery that allows us to create the good work that, if all else holds true, leads to the good fortune we all desire.