Success is Pointless Without Someone to Share it With

A cautionary tale on love and work.

From a young age, our concept of success is molded by our parents, teachers, and peers.

We equate it with the number of zeros in our bank accounts, the zip codes we live in and the make of car (or cars) in our driveway. These things are easily measured, making great but flawed proxies for success.

We often find a correlation between these proxies and obesity, drug addiction, divorce, and nervous breakdowns.

History is littered with professionally successful people whose personal lives were in disarray.

Is that what success looks like?

Is that what we want?

Of course not.

Losing My Best Friend

For a long time, I kneeled at the altar of hustle.

And as a result, I undervalued a close personal relationship.

In my late 30s, it resulted in the breakdown of a five-year-long romantic relationship — the loss of a best friend, albeit an underappreciated one.

It was in the aftermath of this loss, sitting in my living room, surrounded by the silence, painful reminders, and the void left behind — the kitchen no…