The Thinnest of Lines

From Conundrum and Castle Peaks

I have in my possession 70-some photos proving that four friends and I summitted Castle Peak from Conundrum Hot Springs. To look at those photos, you'd think we traversed a crumbly mountain, made our way across and up a steep gully into and out of a high mountain amphitheater as we climbed a jagged ridge to a saddle between two peaks before climbing both.


credit Thomas Fuller

We did all this. But what the pictures don't show is that it took us 12 hours to go up and down less than 3.5 miles. Three of our group didn't make it back before nightfall. I made it before dark, but not before vomiting from a combination of the migraine I'd endured and the Hydrocodone I'd popped several hours before. I felt so sick that upon arrival at camp, I skipped dinner and naked time in the hot springs, preferring instead to writhe in my tent like the invalid from The Secret Garden.



Was the trip a success? I guess so, but you tell me. Put one way, it's another notch on our five belts. But no one who saw me that day would say I conquered the mountain--especially the guy who who slipped in my vomit. It's ironic because sometimes I think the whole reason I climb mountains is because it's so easy to judge whether one succeeds or fails.



Which brings me to business ethics class and drug use. My professor says that traders in many of the international firms snort more coke than Amy Winehouse. But they can produce for 20 hours straight. I don't know anything about that but I can tell you that Adderoll is all over the poker world and it's getting more and more difficult to argue with the drug's results. Even Sherlock Holmes had his 7% solution. Meanwhile, people in Major League Baseball are praying to the two-seam Gods that Albert Pujols, America's Pastime's last great hope doesn't get caught on anything.

I'm glad to report that rampant drug use and a shattered family life are both absent from my own life but it nevertheless seems to me that success and failure are separated by the thinnest of lines, especially for those of us without a publicist. I'm putting myself through grad school but I often feel that I'm staving off insanity one martini at a time.



Is success even real or is it merely an Aristotelian ideal somewhere in the ether that we're all snorting? Even if it is real, by what baseline are we measuring success, and at what cost? We lament the fact that Philadelphia Eagles Head Coach Andy Reid is in bad health and has a terrible family life but it's more comfortable to applaud his NFC Championship 4-peat and then cut to a commercial break.



The message I'm hearing from B-School is that if it's within the rules and it's profitable, it's successful. This from the school that just cut two classes from my degree without reducing "annual tuition." Great Success!