In summary, what are your thoughts on what it takes to be successful?

[Rev. Rye]

I don't care if the extent of your "success credibility" is finishing a grand total of one semester in community college with straight B's on merely 9 credits (three classes), or ending up as the most influential politician in a world power like China or America, or anywhere in between. Athletic accomplishments count, video game victories count, anything counts as long as it's a worthy goal that was achieved...

For you, if you can summarize your thoughts, what do you think it takes for a person to go from rags to riches?

I consider myself a philosopher and I generally just avoid theological and metaphysical questions like the plague. But on matters of ethics, morality, psychology, and eudamonia, I get enthused to hear things and talk things.

I'm all ears. Please.

The one constant I've been able to find in success stories is sheer dumb luck. You could bust your ass off for decades and it ultimately wouldn't mean a thing (at least in terms of outward success) unless something happens like, finding a much more successful person who can bring more attention to what you're doing, or being able to do something else that a lot of other people want and coming to their attention at the right time (preferably before there are too many other people doing the same thing.)

Vincent Van Gogh sold exactly one painting in his life. It sold for roughly the equivalent of less than $1800 in today's money. It took decades after his suicide for the right voices to turn the art world onto this obscure Dutch painter and make him into one of the most famous painters in history, who, for over a decade, even had the most expensive painting ever sold at auction.

And by contrast, Nathanael West, one of my favourite authors, died in 1940, and, between his four novels, he had less than 10,000 copies printed of them total. None of them sold well, and, despite his having quite a few champions, and two of his books even being made into films (both films flopped hard), and even with the protagonist of the longest-running sitcom in American history being named after one of West's protagonists, even decades later, I've had literature teachers who never heard of him before I mentioned him.