By Charles Hugh Smith

The price we're paying to keep our heads above water steepens while the pay-off is dropping off a cliff.

October 11, 2019 "Information Clearing House" - A good friend related a story that goes directly to the heart of what's broken in our way of life. My friend went to a reunion in Silicon Valley attended by the most successful cohort in America: super-smart, highly educated people in their mid-40s who have achieved the highest levels of professional accomplishment and built enormous financial wealth, with net worths not just in the millions but in many cases in the tens of millions of dollars.

These are people at the apex of the American economy and society, those who did everything right, worked hard and grasped the brass ring of conventional success.

Yet when the meeting broke into small groups and individuals were asked to speak briefly about their lives, more than a few people teared up and began weeping. My friend was struck by the disconnect between their tremendous success and their personal misery--of failed marriages, of being trapped in their jobs, in feeling their sacrifices weren't worth it and in sensing the shallowness of their success and the poverty of their inner lives.

Not every super-successful person was miserable, of course; some had shifted gears to lower-paid work they found more fulfilling and others still loved their careers. But what was near-universal was the desire to get the heck out of Silicon Valley and leave its pressure-cooker lifestyle in the dust.

It takes a great deal of honesty and inner strength to admit in public that conventional success hasn't delivered the glorious fulfillment and happiness we're scripted to expect.