Success Key: Round Up The Usual Suspects
“Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual
suspects.” –Claude Rains, AKA Captain Renault in
Casablanca
A police officer has a problem, a puzzle to solve. One
step he or she can take is to, “Round up the usual
suspects.” It is possible that the answer to the puzzle
lies with one of these individuals. Either someone in that
group knows something about the “crime” or is involved in
some way.
True, the perpetrator may be someone outside the usual
group suspected by the police, but there is often a good
chance that they are right.
When you decide to seek “success”; like the police, you can
perform a great many actions to find what you are looking
for. You can do a lot of research (detecting), you can get
the thoughts and opinions of others (questioning), you can
read classics on the subject and listen to CDs about how to
be successful (training), and you can just do a lot of leg
work (leg work - sorry, couldn’t resist). You can even
“stake out” the joint, in hopes of catching sight of what
success looks like and with whom it is hanging out.
Another thing you can do is round up the usual suspects,
or, in this case, suspect…you.
Back when you and I were kids, we knew exactly what success
looked like and where to find it. We weren’t too sure
about how to get there, but that was not important. What
mattered to us was to be an astronaut, cowboy, doctor,
teacher, carpenter, model, rock star…or any one of a
million other dreams…when we grew up. Unfortunately, in
the process of growing up, most of us have also grown away
from those original fantastic flashes of brilliance which
illuminated the pathway to our personal fame and glory.
Few things can so illuminate a path as a torch shining at
the end of our journey, or at the least a visible target to
aim for. Years ago, I used to train people to find their
way over all sorts of terrain. One problem many people had
was that they spent so much time looking at the space
around them that they lost site of the target point and
wandered off the track. While wandering off-track can be
fun, it tends to take us farther away from our goal.
As pointed out, growing up presented us with a huge
selection of other paths and many of us decide that the
dream is too far away or too difficult to reach. Perhaps
we assume other responsibilities, and, having chosen that
path, lose our way in terms of what could have been
“success” and happiness had we not strayed. That’s not to
say that people, having chosen other paths, do not ever
achieve success or happiness in the role they have found
themselves in, but how much happier might they have been
had they continued to listen to the boy or girl inside who
knew EXACTLY what would make them happy.
Let me tell you a small story.
In the 1920’s in Atlanta, Georgia, there was a boy whose
mother died when he was very young and whose father worked
for the railroad. The boy lived with various relatives,
but one of his father’s sisters really wound up raising
him. Through her, he learned to love music and the arts.
He got a decent education and, along the way, he learned to
play the violin. He played so well, in fact, that, still
in his teens, he played first violin for a symphony
orchestra.
In those days, however, it was hard to make a living as a
“fiddle player”, and he soon had a wife and children to
support. He fell back on some earlier training, became a
watch maker, and eventually an instrument mechanic at
Pensacola Naval Air Station finally retiring after over 30
years of service. He was a pillar of the community,
respected at work and at his church, and was regularly
called upon to serve in one capacity or another. It seemed
that, although not rich or famous, almost everybody in the
area knew him by name.
Through all those years, he never lost his love of music.
Although he never touched a violin again, he bought records
and tapes of classical music and played them regularly, a
wistful look upon his face.
How much more “successful” he would have been had he looked
within and recognized that the love he had for his music
was not only something which could have fed his family and
made him a much, much happier man, but which would have
allowed him to give a wonderful gift to the world.
Fortunately, he did pass his love of beauty and music on to
his children, and sometimes I take out my father’s old 78’s
and listen to the songs and sounds he loved so much.
I am not saying that we have no need to accept
responsibilities and even sometimes sacrifice our finest
dreams in order to build something more important. If my
grandchildren need my help, or just my time, the computer
will be put away, the writing which I love so much will
stop, and I will teach them how to play baseball and read
stories of heroes and dragons. Since life has given me a
second chance to live the dream I put away so many years
ago to shoulder what I saw as MY responsibilities, I will
use this time to follow the beacon I first saw in a high
school English class over 40 years ago.
I looked within myself and there I found the answer to my
puzzle. The suspect I met within was a young man from many
years ago who remembered the vision he had seen. He was
able to give me the clues I needed to solve the riddle of
how I could find happiness. He and I are going to have
many great years together, I think.
Or, as Humphrey Bogart said at the end of Casablanca as he
and Claude Rains walked away to join the Resistance:
“Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful
friendship.”
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Donovan Baldwin is a Dallas area writer. He is a University
of West Florida alumnus, a member of Mensa, and is retired
from the U. S. Army. He posts many of his articles on his
poetry and writing blog at
http://ravensong-poetry.blogspot.com/ .
