Over the years, I've learned that success can be a trap.
One of my favorite analogies for understanding this idea is called the Salt Trap.
I first heard it on the CBS morning show, where comedian Dave Chappelle described a nature program he saw that explained how Bushmen used baboons to find water in times of scarcity.
Apparently baboons love salt.
So [bushmen] put a lump of salt in a hole.
And they wait for the baboon.
The baboon comes, sticks his hand in the hole, and grabs the salt.
Salt makes his hand bigger, and he's trapped.
He can't get his hand out.
And if he's smart, all he does is let go of the salt.
But the baboon doesn't want to let go of the salt.
Then the bushman comes, takes the baboon, throws him in the cage, and gives him all the salt he wants.
And then the baboon gets thirsty, the bushman lets him out of the cage.
The first place the baboon runs to is water, the bushman follows him, and they both drink to their fill.
And in that analogy, I felt like the baboon.
But I was smart enough to let go of the salt.
In 2005, Dave famously walked away from a $50 million deal to renew his popular Comedy Central show, Chappelle's Show.
Over the years since, Dave has shared small tidbits of what happened to him in 2005. He recounted examples where his staff was feeding stories to the press saying that he was struggling with writer's block, even though he wasn't scheduled to start writing until a few weeks later. He explained how his business partners were trying to convince him that he had gone insane and needed psychotic medication. And in one, almost symbolic example, Dave had showed up to work only to find that his office had been walled up. His staff later tried to convince him that it was his idea. Dave saw the writing on the wall and walked away from 50 million dollars because the price of success was getting too expensive. He wasn’t having fun on the show anymore, his sanity was being questioned, his well-being was at jeopardy—success was attempting to trap him in a life he did not want to live and instead he said “no” to it, he walked away from an amount of money most of us would dream of having.
Dave's story is an extreme one but the moral can apply to our own lives in smaller ways.
Are you working a job you can’t stand for the sake of a large salary? Have you promoted yourself to a role you hate because it’s was “the logical next step?” Are making a lot of money at what you do, but what you do is reliably unfulfilling, boring, or soul-sucking?
Like the baboon, maybe our imprisonment from success is self-inflicted, because our grip to hold on to what we’ve worked so hard to earn is too tight. Maybe it's costing us other things we value like agency, freedom, and mental well-being--things that are arguably worth more.
And, maybe like Dave, we need to reframe what we’re saying “no” to.
He wasn’t saying “no” to success, he was just listening to the advice his father had given him when he was just starting out:
Name your price in the beginning. If it every gets more expensive, get out of there.
Music that makes you go
A 50¢ word (aka words that say a lot with less)
Autarky (noun): a practice that promotes (social, cultural, economic) self-sufficiency
For Your Thoughts
“The thing that gives you power also traps you.”
-Eckhart Tolle
Yours,
-Rahul
P.S. a reminder you can reply directly to oldmanrahul@substack.com, or you can tweet me @oldmanrahul about this edition. Thanks for reading and supporting my writing :)