Success is from Within

I can look out my windows during the day without concern that someone can look in. With the sun shining, my windows are like one-way mirrors to the outside world.

At night, however, when the lights are on and it is dark outside, everyone can see inside.

We've had a few unfortunate examples lately of everyone seeing what goes on inside someone's house.

I don't need to elaborate on the well-known actions of Bernard Madoff. The world can now see inside his "house." The light of the news media shines on the suffering of his immediate family, his friends, and many Jewish charities. When no one was looking, Mr. Madoff concocted his "successful" Ponzi scheme. Now his proverbial house of cards has fallen.

Marc Dreier is another example of worldly success. The son of a Polish immigrant who came to the U.S. in 1939, Mr. Dreier graduated from Yale College and Harvard Law School. Yet becoming a prominent lawyer was not enough. Mr. Dreier is accused of forging promissory notes and even impersonating another lawyer in order to cover his tracks.

What would drive a man who is already at the top of his profession to commit a crime? It seems to me that he forgot that eventually even the best made curtains wear thin, allowing others to see within.

Mr. Madoff and Dreier stand out as egregious examples of what happens when we choose to present a facade to the world. How many of us, in large ways and small, say one thing and do another?

Tragically, it often takes a crisis or loss to break through the facade. Divorce, illness, death of a loved one, or loss of a job may result in the insight that has been lurking in the wings all through the years.

But it is insight gained through tears.

As Shakespeare put it in Hamlet, This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.