Your Preconceived, Great Future

If you’re top of your class in high school, that is, if you beat everyone else in the competition for the highest mark of teenage, scholastic competition, you win the prize: valedictorian.

In a system that prizes such accolades, you have a chance to be admitted into an Ivy League school. Yale works. If you have what it takes, you’ll compete and win at Yale, too. Maybe graduating top of your class. Maybe somewhere close.

In either case, you will set yourself up to compete for a spot at a prestigious law school. Say Stanford Law. The rigor of that program gives you the best chance you have to compete for the most coveted—and competitive—position of all JD graduates: Supreme Court Justice Clerk.

Winning this competitive track, by all measurements, sets you up for job security, financial success, and respect.

Unless, of course, you’re Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal. He competed and won—until he lost. He lost in the end, which was failing to secure the clerkship.

If Thiel was a clerk, he would have been taking depositions, not imagining an alternative transaction platform.

If Thiel was busy reading and comparing cases, he would have been swimming in pages of legal decisions, not scribbling out the initial ideas for PayPal.

If he had succeeded at his preconceived, great future, he would never have revolutionized the way we shop and buy online.

His failure fueled the possibility for more.
His failure enabled the potential for better.
His failure allowed his imagination to run.
His failure—at least, the failure of his preconceived future—was the initial success that made space for his greater future to emerge.