This weekend I listened to two the stories of two men who wrestled with finding pathways to happiness. The circumstances under which they both struggled to reinvent themselves, however, could not be more different as one man started his life over after losing everything; while the other struggled after obtaining everything.
On YouTube, Mark Thornton tells the story of how he reinvented himself in the Philippines after the pressures of financial loss, divorce, health, and bad luck took him to the brink of despair and survival. At the same time, Bloomberg News posted an interview with billionaire silicon valley investment superstar Chamath Palihapitiya, who discusses reinventing himself at the highest levels of finance amongst the turmoil, dissatisfaction, and unhappiness that came with his “success.”
I am not going to give up the details of Mark’s story. You will have to watch it for yourself. But within Mark’s story, I found an authentic tale of the unfortunate hand of fate. Mark’s story would make an excellent High School curriculum case study to teach students how to plan carefully and make good decisions as a young adult—because starting over in middle life is exhausting.
That said, it’s also good to know that you can and will come out the other side if you don’t give up! The moral of the story? Never, ever give up!
In a different way, listening to Chamath discuss his own need to reinvent himself due to incredible dissatisfaction and unhappiness represented on the other side of the same coin. In the Bloomberg interview, Chamath is forced to reconcile statements he made on the Recode podcast three years ago, in March 2019 as makes his return foray into public venture capital.
The discussion on the Recode podcast is one of the more authentic and interesting conversations I have ever heard from a billionaire. I love this conversation, as Chamath rails against everything that enabled him to become a billionaire at age thirty-two in an effort to find his own pathway to happiness.
The takeaway: We all have a story to tell about our personal journey and how we strive to find happiness and fulfillment, no matter if we are living on the street or in the penthouse.