Outspoken author and fund manager Nassim Taleb gave his first commencement speech at the American University in Beirut, offering advice on judging success, the importance of self-respect, what greed and fear can teach, the uselessness of nonsense, and the importance of having skin the game with every decision one makes...
This is the first commencement I have ever attended (I did not attend my own graduation). Further, I have to figure out how lecture you on success when I do not feel successful yet –and it is not a false modesty.
Success as a Fragile Construction
For I have a single definition of success: you look in the mirror every evening, and wonder if you disappoint the person you were at 18, right before the age when people start getting corrupted by life. Let him or her be the only judge; not your reputation, not your wealth, not your standing in the community, not the decorations on your lapel. If you do not feel ashamed, you are successful. All other definitions of success are modern constructions; fragile modern constructions.
The Ancient Greeks’ main definition of success was to have had a heroic death. But as we live in a less martial world, even in Lebanon, we can adapt our definition of success as having taken a heroic route for the benefits of the collective, as narrowly or broadly defined collective as you wish. So long as all you do is not all for you: secret societies used to have a rule for uomo d’onore: you do something for yourself and something for your other members. And virtue is inseparable from courage. Like the courage to do something unpopular. Take risks for the benefit of others; it doesn’t have to be humanity, it can be helping say Beirut Madinati or the local municipality. The more micro, the less abstract, the better.
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