Chapter 6 - Ethical Culture Fieldston School

“Mr. Sinatra Gets Rejected”
had inhabited them with an intensity that few of us have the stomach for.
Because let’s face it: dreams wear you down. Even if you have confidence, talent,
opportunity, energy, courage, and luck – things I’ve spent the last few pages
tracing – there’s no guarantee that you’ll get what you want, or that you’ll be
satisfied once you do.
Indeed, even after achieving more fame, wealth, and admiration than any
sane person could ever hope to achieve, Sinatra – like many before and after him
– seemed to regard mere success as somehow unworthy of serious consideration.
“Happy? I don’t know,” Sinatra once responded to a query about the early days.
“I wasn’t unhappy, let’s put it that way. I never had it so good. Sometimes I
wonder whether anybody had it like I had it, before or since. It’s was the
damnedest thing, wasn’t it? But I was too busy ever to know whether I was
happy or even to ask myself.” 24
More than anything else, it was Sinatra’s busy‐ness – his legendary work
ethic that cut through the culture of personality he came of age in – that was
cornerstone of his success. And that busy‐ness, in turn, rested on an assumption
that his (often remarkably focused) actions would make a difference as to the
outcome of his life. The American Dream has been many different things to
many different people in the last four centuries, but its inexhaustible ends have
tended to obscure its indispensable means: a sense of agency. Not everyone can
become a star, but those who do usually believe that will is the engine of success.
“Luck is fine, and you have to have luck to get the opportunity,” Sinatra once
told columnist Earl Wilson. “But after that, you’ve got to have talent and know
how to use it.” 25 There’s little doubt where the emphasis is here. But as Sinatra
would learn, luck and opportunity (not to mention to actions of others) will
24 Quoted in Taraborell, p. 56.
American History for Cynical Beginners
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