The Price of Success

I wrote an email to a new friend this morning. He and I have a mutual friend in the music industry who has been VERY successful. Our friend worked his way up from a session and road drummer to recording engineer to studio executive. He has every musician's dream of success. But, in his case, it came with a heavy price. It cost him a marriage, and the life of his teenage son to suicide. Could he have been successful without that cost? Could he have paid that price and not been successful? I don't know. I do know you can find examples of those that have lost and failed and those who have not lost ans succeeded.

Did success demand that high a price? I don't know. But, in the music industry, to be the best requires hours and hours of time learning, practicing, and trying to perfect something that is so subjective. Look at the top 40 songs in any genre, they change every week. The songs that were popular a year ago don't get airplay today. There are some classics, but they are very few and there is no objective criteria for what makes a classic. The bottom line is this, music is never perfected. You will always learn a new riff, sound, or something? It requires a level of effort you must be wiling to invest. You practice and explore daily. But, you have to do that in balance with the other priorities of life - faith, family, health, finances . . . you know your priorities. Unfortunately, there is no good formula. I believe it was the great golfer Jack Nicholas who came the closest to a formula. But his formula is for golf, he said, "The proper score for a businessman golfer is 90. If he is better than that he is neglecting his business. If he's worse, he's neglecting his golf." Now, how do we translate that to other areas of our life?