Watched a decent movie Pursuit of Happyness faily recently, and then I cam across an article on Martin Gardner, the central character in this movie. The title of the movie was deliberately spelt wrong*. I think the name of the movie is also kind of misleading as the movie is primarily about pursuit of wealth rather than happiness. As we know, wealth is most often a subset of happiness. I guess the title is OK as the US is an epitome for capitalism!
Chris Gardner's unlikely road to riches started in the parking lot of San Francisco General Hospital in 1982. Then age 29 and the father of year-and-a-half-old Christopher, he was barely making ends meet as a medical equipment salesman. He was about to get into his car when he saw a red Ferrari searching for a parking space. Impulsively, he waved the driver over and said, "I'll give you my spot, but I want to ask you two questions: What do you do, and how do you do it?"
The Ferrari's owner said he was a stockbroker. Gardner asked what the job paid. At the time, the top salespeople where Gardner worked were making $80,000 a year. "This broker was making $80,000 a month," Gardner recalls.
The two men hit it off. Over occasional lunches, the broker explained how the business worked and how to break into it. He even gave Gardner a list of referrals. Gardner began knocking on doors -- but had them slammed in his face. "At the time, brokerage firms were starting to require MBA degrees," he explains. "I didn't even go to college. It wasn't racism. It was place-ism. I did not have a college degree. I did not come from a politically connected family. I had no money. So who was going to do business with me?"
After ten months of pursuing fruitless leads, Gardner found someone willing to give him a shot. He quit his job and showed up for his appointment, only to discover his contact had been fired. No one knew who he was or why he was there.
But life remained precarious. After an argument Gardner had with his girlfriend, someone called the police. A routine check of his license plate number turned up a backlog of unpaid parking tickets. And that led to ten days in jail.
Once out of jail, Gardner went to the interview wearing all he had -- the Windbreaker and bell-bottom jeans he had been arrested in. The interviewer glanced up and said, "Deliveries in the rear."
Gardner decided to take a desperate chance. "I could not think of a lie bizarre enough, so I told the truth. I said, 'I just got out of prison on a parking ticket charge, my ex left me, and I don't know where my child is. But I am here because I believe I am supposed to be in this business.'" The interviewer had been through a couple of divorces and could sympathize. Gardner won a place in the training program. Now he had to do well enough to be offered a job.
"We would leave the shelter in the a.m., my son in his stroller, my duffel bag with all his clothes and diapers, my briefcase, one suit on my back and one in a bag. Many nights we slept in bathrooms in transit stations or under my desk at work."
* According to Mr. Gardner, the misspelled title refers to a sign he saw at the daycare center his son attended during their dark days on the street.Gardner took to the trade and, within a few years, fulfilled his dream of working on Wall Street. In 1987, he opened his own brokerage firm, Gardner Rich & Co., in Chicago. And he bought his own Ferrari.
Gardner doesn't see his story as a rags-to-riches fairy tale. Rather, he says, "mine is a story of how to empower yourself and beat the odds stacked against you. My life could have been easily derailed by domestic violence and homelessness, but I made a choice to not let those things sink me. You can break the destructive cycles that ensnare you. Be smart, have a plan and hold on to the people you love."
1 comment:
Very nice, Gopa.
Now someone should make a movie called The Pursuit of Hippyness. T hey could base it on The Drifters, that lovely tome by James Michener.
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