I have no way of knowing whether or not Marv Levy, the successful coach of the Buffalo Bills, had some special insight into human success and failure. I know of a remark attributed to him, and I don’t doubt, because of his successful record, that he could well be its author. He established a reputation as a highly intelligent man both inside and outside the arenas in which he coached. The remark? “I can’t guarantee you success if you work hard, but I can guarantee you failure if you don’t.” Levy supposedly made the remark to his team as they trained for the season ahead.
Makes sense, doesn’t it? It makes even more sense if you consider Marv Levy’s record. In the early 1990s, Levy led the Bills to four consecutive Super Bowls, and somewhere there’s a quotation from his quarterback Jim Kelly that Levy was responsible for keeping the team focused and prepared. But, of course, working hard doesn’t guarantee ultimate success as both Levy and Kelly discovered. The Bills lost all four of the big games. Yet, who could deny Levy’s accomplishments in getting to a championship game that eludes all but two teams every season? His work ethic and his inspiration led his team into that final arena. As hard to accept as those losses were, they didn’t seem to dishearten the coach or throw him into despair. He even survived a bout with cancer.
I wonder what Levy might say to Job, the successful guy who has a whole book named for him in the Bible. Job had everything and then, through no apparent fault of his own, lost everything: Land, wealth, and family. Job obviously did something right early on. Let’s call him the billionaire of his time. He seems to have reached the Super Bowl of wealth and happy family. But then the losses came. Like Marv Levy, he made it to the big game, but he left without the trophy, and even worse, his team—his family—was destroyed, and he suffered from diseases.
This isn’t about taking the story literally. That requires belief in a bet between God and Satan, with the latter arguing that Job was faithful merely because he had inordinate wealth. The non-billionaires might argue that people with wealth are prone to be happier than those without it. Satan tells God, “Yeah! Sure. Who wouldn’t be pious and righteous under Job’s circumstances. You gave the guy everything. I’ll bet he would sing a different tune if he didn’t have anything.”
Bold and crazy, right. I mean, who’s going to challenge the Supreme Being and tell him what’s what? God, if you know the story, tells Satan that he can do whatever he wants to Job’s status. So, Satan takes everything Job had worked for and built up. As the story goes, in his loss, Job refuses to blame God and remains pious and humble. By the end of the tale, Job is wealthy again.
Back to Marv Levy. He certainly reached a pinnacle of success under his philosophy of hard work. Some, of course, judging from their less successful positions, would say, “Yeah. But he failed to win the Super Bowl.” Of course, from their perspective, not winning everything is a mark of failure—even though they themselves never accomplished as much as Levy who, after retiring, became an author and a speaker.
The Old Testament story doesn’t detail any hard work Job might have put into rising from his losses. We could assume that God returned to him more than everything he had lost, but in the world that we understand, such acquisitions usually require some work, maybe lots of work. Levy, also, never seems to have stopped working, even coaching with the same enthusiasm after cancer as he had before cancer. Now in his nineties, he still appears to have the drive encapsulated in his advice to his team.
Certain people seem to be capable of persistent drive in the face of adversity. Like every human, they face crises, but they rise from any setback to new accomplishments, and in doing so, they become models for the rest of us. If Job were around today, he, like Levy, might be sought out for his opinion and for words of inspiration. No doubt—well, maybe, some doubt because I have never spoken to Marv Levy—they would probably have similar messages about hard work and perseverance and about keeping a positive attitude. They would probably also speak about life’s priorities.
You can judge whether the following is relevant to the stories of Job and Levy. It’s the last paragraph of Chapter VII in Hamilton Wright Mabie’s Essays on Work and Culture.
"No man is free until he can dispose of himself; until he is sought after instead of seeking; until, in the noblest sense of the words, he commands his own price in the world. There are men in every generation who push this self-development and self-mastery so far, and who obtain such a large degree of freedom in consequence, that the keys of all doors are open to them. We call such men masters, not to suggest subjection to them, but as an instinctive recognition of the fact that they have secured emancipation from the limitations from which most men never escape. In a world given over to apprenticeship these heroic spirits have attained the degree of mastership. They have not been carried to commanding positions by happy tides of favourable circumstance; they have not stumbled into greatness; they have attained what they have secured and they hold it by virtue of superior intelligence, skill, and power. They possess more freedom than their fellows because they have worked with finer insight, with steadier persistence, and with more passionate enthusiasm. They are masters because they are free; but their freedom was bought with a great price."*
Hard work has no substitute. Persistence is a key to success. Obstacles are inevitable. No one has to surrender to inimical circumstances. Success is attainable, but never guaranteed.
*Mabie, Hamilton Wright. Essays on Work and Culture, 1898. Online at http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6143/pg6143-images.html
Makes sense, doesn’t it? It makes even more sense if you consider Marv Levy’s record. In the early 1990s, Levy led the Bills to four consecutive Super Bowls, and somewhere there’s a quotation from his quarterback Jim Kelly that Levy was responsible for keeping the team focused and prepared. But, of course, working hard doesn’t guarantee ultimate success as both Levy and Kelly discovered. The Bills lost all four of the big games. Yet, who could deny Levy’s accomplishments in getting to a championship game that eludes all but two teams every season? His work ethic and his inspiration led his team into that final arena. As hard to accept as those losses were, they didn’t seem to dishearten the coach or throw him into despair. He even survived a bout with cancer.
I wonder what Levy might say to Job, the successful guy who has a whole book named for him in the Bible. Job had everything and then, through no apparent fault of his own, lost everything: Land, wealth, and family. Job obviously did something right early on. Let’s call him the billionaire of his time. He seems to have reached the Super Bowl of wealth and happy family. But then the losses came. Like Marv Levy, he made it to the big game, but he left without the trophy, and even worse, his team—his family—was destroyed, and he suffered from diseases.
This isn’t about taking the story literally. That requires belief in a bet between God and Satan, with the latter arguing that Job was faithful merely because he had inordinate wealth. The non-billionaires might argue that people with wealth are prone to be happier than those without it. Satan tells God, “Yeah! Sure. Who wouldn’t be pious and righteous under Job’s circumstances. You gave the guy everything. I’ll bet he would sing a different tune if he didn’t have anything.”
Bold and crazy, right. I mean, who’s going to challenge the Supreme Being and tell him what’s what? God, if you know the story, tells Satan that he can do whatever he wants to Job’s status. So, Satan takes everything Job had worked for and built up. As the story goes, in his loss, Job refuses to blame God and remains pious and humble. By the end of the tale, Job is wealthy again.
Back to Marv Levy. He certainly reached a pinnacle of success under his philosophy of hard work. Some, of course, judging from their less successful positions, would say, “Yeah. But he failed to win the Super Bowl.” Of course, from their perspective, not winning everything is a mark of failure—even though they themselves never accomplished as much as Levy who, after retiring, became an author and a speaker.
The Old Testament story doesn’t detail any hard work Job might have put into rising from his losses. We could assume that God returned to him more than everything he had lost, but in the world that we understand, such acquisitions usually require some work, maybe lots of work. Levy, also, never seems to have stopped working, even coaching with the same enthusiasm after cancer as he had before cancer. Now in his nineties, he still appears to have the drive encapsulated in his advice to his team.
Certain people seem to be capable of persistent drive in the face of adversity. Like every human, they face crises, but they rise from any setback to new accomplishments, and in doing so, they become models for the rest of us. If Job were around today, he, like Levy, might be sought out for his opinion and for words of inspiration. No doubt—well, maybe, some doubt because I have never spoken to Marv Levy—they would probably have similar messages about hard work and perseverance and about keeping a positive attitude. They would probably also speak about life’s priorities.
You can judge whether the following is relevant to the stories of Job and Levy. It’s the last paragraph of Chapter VII in Hamilton Wright Mabie’s Essays on Work and Culture.
"No man is free until he can dispose of himself; until he is sought after instead of seeking; until, in the noblest sense of the words, he commands his own price in the world. There are men in every generation who push this self-development and self-mastery so far, and who obtain such a large degree of freedom in consequence, that the keys of all doors are open to them. We call such men masters, not to suggest subjection to them, but as an instinctive recognition of the fact that they have secured emancipation from the limitations from which most men never escape. In a world given over to apprenticeship these heroic spirits have attained the degree of mastership. They have not been carried to commanding positions by happy tides of favourable circumstance; they have not stumbled into greatness; they have attained what they have secured and they hold it by virtue of superior intelligence, skill, and power. They possess more freedom than their fellows because they have worked with finer insight, with steadier persistence, and with more passionate enthusiasm. They are masters because they are free; but their freedom was bought with a great price."*
Hard work has no substitute. Persistence is a key to success. Obstacles are inevitable. No one has to surrender to inimical circumstances. Success is attainable, but never guaranteed.
*Mabie, Hamilton Wright. Essays on Work and Culture, 1898. Online at http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6143/pg6143-images.html
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