As a tribute to the restless minds of people who are never satisfied with their accomplishments, the great inventor Thomas Edison never stopped trying to solve impediments toward a modern world. Late in his life he became obsessed with trying to build a storage battery but was never able to get around some of the physical and conditional difficulties to really transform society the way he wanted. He did invent a battery that became known as the Alkaline battery, but not without much frustration and cost.
It became known that Edison had attempted more than 2,000 variations of building the storage battery and all failed to live up to expectations. A reporter, and naturally this would come from a reporter, asked the aging Edison how it felt to be such a great man and to have failed 2,000 times. He responded by saying something like, “I don’t believe I’ve failed. I know 2,000 ways not to make a storage battery. How many ways do you know?”
And I guess the point is that unless you try to do something and put in the energy, there is no chance of success.
I’ve just encountered something of the same nature in Russia and perhaps it equals 2,000 ways not to work here. I’ve tried, put in the work, been obsessed and all I have left is for a reporter to ask me the big failure question. So on this coming Monday, I more or less wave the white flag as I leave Russia with little to show for my extensive time here other than the collateral damage left by being absent for so long.
Someone once told me that they viewed my approach to Russia as someone chipping away at a steel door with a tack hammer. I made a dent, but was never going to break the door down. The reasons for my lack of success are myriad and probably mostly beside the point. I wish I could blame the Russians for the way they carry out business but the sad truth is, just as many Americans and other foreigners broke apart deals that appeared headed for success. Yes, I’ve learned my ways not to work here; not to be the consummate middleman, not to agree to everything everyone wants done, not to do something for nothing less you want a reputation of the go-to guy who does something for nothing. There are less charitable reasons but I’ll leave that up to therapy sessions.
In between all the million dollar deals that never became, I had my moments. I learned to live in and adapt to different cultures, met a lot of really nice people who I will miss and I’ve learned to better trust my instincts, even if I didn’t follow them. My gut even tells me that all is not lost now and there will be a pot of gold at the end of some rainbow. Of course this kind of thinking is equal rub as it is a fit of optimism. How to say No to the next promise of the next big project? The gut knows well how to manipulate the brain so who knows what will occur.
What I do know is I return feeling betrayed again by the world after asking it to find a good use for me in exchange for giving back something better. I return knowing, and this is the difficult part, that I had the answers for the correct questions, knew the solutions to the right problems and had the ideas that should have merited more consideration. In the end, however, knowing all of this does not salve the wounded spirit or the feeling that I was always outside the inside joke. These scars will last as will the scars I inflicted on others as I brought them with me on my Quixotic journey of self-indulgence.
It would be easiest to leave here with the memory of a bitter taste, but that wouldn’t be right in the long run. Better just to say I know 2,000 ways not to work in Russia and leave it at that.
