The evolution of success

On a ferry ride to San Francisco, Martin Eden looked over to see a rowdy group of drunk young men beating up a stranger. Guided by his profound sense of street justice, Eden jumped into the fray, knocked out a few teeth, and single-handedly fought off all of the attackers. The grateful victim, a man named Arthur Morse, invited Eden over for dinner to thank him. It was a dinner that he would never forget.

Martin Eden was a sailor. True to the legacy of hard-living seafarers of the early 1900s, he had no education, no money, and a body full of scars to prove it. Morse, on the other hand, was well-educated and quite wealthy. When Eden arrived at the house for dinner in his ragged suit, he couldn’t imagine a more intimidating scene.

Then he saw the oil painting on the wall.

Depicting a small sailboat up against a heavy surf with storm clouds overhead, Eden couldn’t believe the intricate details captured by the artist, right down to the grain of the wood on the deck. From there, he saw a pile of books on the table. He randomly picked one up by the English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne and started feverishly reading. Eden was intoxicated, and for the first time in his life, it wasn’t from the drink.

As he devoured Swinburne, he heard Morse say, “Ruth, this is Mr. Eden.” Eden looked up and saw her. The paintings, books, and music were one thing, but this girl was something else entirely. Her smooth skin, blue eyes, and angel face transported him to another place. She wanted to meet the man who saved her brother’s life. The two sat down to talk, and even though they came from completely different worlds, they both felt an undeniable spark.

Later reflecting on this night, Eden said that he felt like a starving man finding food for the first time. He knew he couldn’t go back to his brutish life on the sea. So, over the course of the next three years, he worked hard jobs during the day and immersed himself in books at night. It was no easy road, but it did help Eden find his true calling. He was going to be a writer.

His vision was clear: Get stories published in magazines, write a book, find great success, and earn the status and wealth that he needed to marry Ruth Morse. And while he knew that other people may have more talent, he was sure that no one had more grit. Eden worked long hours in a laundry to save money, then took time off to write and send manuscripts to magazines. He lived this cycle for three years until he had a stack of rejections as high as his desk.

Three years of “no” took its toll.

Toward the end of this stretch, Eden pawned his coat, then his watch, and finally his bicycle. He was only eating one potato per day and on the brink of starvation. With Ruth Morse long gone, he was just about to give up when he got an offer from a magazine to buy his manuscript for five dollars. An offer that was followed by a neverending cascade of acceptances from magazines.

He received more money in the year that followed than he could have dreamed. The publishers who used to ignore or reject him now desperately sought the very same manuscripts they had mailed back the year before. There were book offers, speaking requests, endless accolades, and renewed admiration from Ruth Morse. Eden sat firmly atop the high society that he worked so hard to join. He had arrived—yet he felt empty inside.

Eden couldn’t get past the fact that nothing in his work had changed from the days when he was broke, alone, and rejected. He wanted the world to love his work because it moved them, not because it was trendy or profitable to do so. Eden felt duped. So he gave away much of his wealth to friends and family and booked a porthole cabin on the SS Mariposa to Tahiti.

Fair winds and following seas.

Eden found little peace on that boat. Each day of the journey left him more depressed. One night when he couldn’t sleep, he turned on the bedside light and flipped open a book to a poem by Swinburne:

From too much love of living, from hope and fear set free. We thank with brief thanksgiving, whatever gods may be. That no life lives forever; That dead men rise up never; That even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.

That dead men rise up never. For the first time that he could remember, Eden saw a path to peace. He opened the porthole and looked down at the seemingly infinite depths beneath him. Eden took one more look at his physical world, inhaled a deep breath, and dove to a depth from which he would never return. Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea.

This is not a true story.

Well, not entirely. Martin Eden is a 1909 novel written by Jack London at the height of his success. (In fact, he wanted to call this book Success.) And given that London was also a sailor who worked for three years to teach himself how to write, Martin Eden is undoubtedly based on his own life. Also like Eden, London felt that his success was somewhat arbitrary and empty.

But there is a critical difference between the two men. Jack London didn’t write this book because he saw himself in Martin Eden; he wrote it because he was worried that the rest of the world did. This book was London’s plea to save people from the emptiness that he saw in rampant individualism. Because London believed that if we only focus on our own achievements and ignore the needs of others, we will never find the peace we seek.

And what if London was right?

In his 2015 book The Road to Character, David Brooks wrote about a study published in 1954. Psychologists asked more than 10,000 adolescents whether they considered themselves to be a very important person. At that point, just 12 percent said yes. The same study was replicated in 1989, and this time roughly 80 percent said yes. Did we all get more important, or did we forget about each other?

With addiction and depression on the rise, there are too many of us who feel like Eden on the Mariposa. Looking down from the porthole to infinite depths, hungry to be something more than we are today. But maybe we can pull ourselves back, close that hatch, and remember that the road to peace and success is never walked alone. The dead men may rise up never, but we can when we’re together.

We are not alone.

This is an excerpt from my last book, Work Songs. If you like words like these, you can subscribe to this newsletter.