Tommy Tune and ensemble performing in
the Broadway musical Seesaw (dir. Michael Bennett, 1973)
Your final return will not diminish / And you can be the cream of the crop -
It's not where you start, it's where you finish / And you're gonna finish on top! [1]
I.
Commenting on my temptation of Christ post (7 August 2026), an anonymous demon makes some fascinating points and encourages readers to investigate certain non-canonical texts classified as biblical apocrypha.
But they also write this: "It's not where writers begin but where they end that generally tells the final truth of their legacy ..."
In other words, they take a disappointing turn into tired cliché by dressing up a maxim that is repeatedly used by sports psychologists, motivational speakers, self-help authors, and sparkly showbiz types rather than those who are genuinely spawned by the Devil and delight in speaking falsehoods rather than mere platitudes.
II.
Just to be clear: I'm not denying the phrase it's not where you start, it's where you finish may have some truth content - and it certainly expresses a comforting, universally understood sentiment, which is precisely why it remains popular among those who have experienced failure or feel themselves to be slow starters in life.
But I hate it and regard it as a belonging to an underdog narrative: You too can overcome base origins or personal misfortune and achieve the greatness you deserve! In this way, it reinforces what Nietzsche termed the slave revolt in morals [2].
Philosophically, it's suspect too in promoting the idea of agency - i.e., that your individual choices and effort matter more than your initial circumstances or fate: The future, my friends, is unwritten - so climb up that ladder and go for it!
In reality, of course, starting positions - such as wealth, access to education, and social connections - heavily determine the direction and final outcome of your life. Those who are lucky enough to have a good start will invariably finish ahead of the game.
Song lyrics asserting if you start at the top, you're certain to drop and that nobody starts a winner [3] are - to not put too fine a point on it - a load of old cobblers, no matter how enthusiastically they're performed.
Ultimately, this uplifting maxim is a banal piece of pseudo-wisdom that ignores systemic inequalities, while encouraging all and sundry to believe that they might be rewarded by the bitch-goddess Success.
It's one thing for some all-too-human commentator like Alex Guillien [4] to buy into the myth of it's not where you start, it's where you finish, but I expect so much more in the way of satanic insight from my more demonic readers ...
Notes
[1] From the song 'It's Not Where You Start', which featured in the American musical Seesaw (1973); music by Cy Coleman and lyrics by Dorothy Fields. The Broadway show was based on William Gibson's play Two for the Seesaw (1958). Click on the link provided to listen to the original Broadway cast recording, provided to YouTube by DRG Records.
Alternatively, if you wish to see multi-talented Tommy Tune and Co. perform the song - which was the big showstopper - then click here. Funnily enough, although I hate the maxim, I love the song and this performance - choreographed by Michael Bennett - is fabulous; it quite literally has it all (including confetti and balloons).
[2] The original German expression used by Nietzsche is der Sklavenaufstand in der Moral and it appears in the First Essay of Zur Genealogie der Moral (1887).
[3] See note [1] above.
[4] Alex Guillien, It's Not Where You Start, It's Where You Finish, Medium (14 June 2016).
While researching this post, I was obliged to read some really piss-poor pieces by authors concerned with wellness, fitness, and inspiration, but I think that this one by Guillien best encapsulates all that I find so objectionable about the endlessly upbeat optimism of those who believe that "opportunities are ever-present", that success is "the progressive realization of a worthy goal" and that the aim in life is to become the "best version of YOU!"
Perhaps SA - in his bizarre statement about those beings who are 'genuinely spawned by the Devil' - could helpfully point us toward one or two of them knocking around the planet. (Unless we're missing something, we can think of Damien in The Omen and Rosemary's malign Baby - and to point out the obvious, they're in films!)
ReplyDeleteNot quite sure why the 'anonymous demon' can't simply be addressed courteously and SA agree to disagree with him in his own Comments pages, which are presumably designed for that purpose, but I guess making a fight (post) out of it all help butter his blog's parsnips. Perhaps, however, he should worry less about his readers passing some kind of prescribed test, Satanic or otherwise, the best of whom will be as protean as he affects to be.
The life-affirming idea of working hard throughout one's life and bringing out the best (or possibly worst) of what one has in oneself isn't a cliche or trite formula, but, even if it were, and as SA acknowledges himself, its 'truth content' (as with all so-called cliches) would still present itself for thinking. In the meantime, it doesn't seem to occur to him that he might himself become a kind of contrarian cliche by feeling the need to feverishly oppose such values at all costs and descend to a kind of effete fatalism, which values one is by definition continuously remaking by remaking oneself. Nor is it a 'comforting' platitude. In fact, it's quite the opposite, as it highlights the need for resilience, persistence, and perseverance - all values we can feel confident the sane Nietzsche would have endorsed in his reference to styling the self:
'One thing is needful.— To "give style" to one's character—a great and rare art! It is practiced by those who survey all the strengths and weaknesses of their nature and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one of them appears as art and reason and even weaknesses delight the eye. [...] For one thing is needful: that a human being should attain satisfaction with himself—whether it be by means of this or that poetry and art: only then is a human being at all tolerable to behold!' (The Gay Science, §290, trans. Kaufmann)
Nietzsche's slave revolt in morality isn't a stupid attack on 'underdogs' (and we love an underdog) wanting to succeed. Instead, his argument is specifically anti-Christian in its application, concerning as it does the transformation of values whereby the powerless come to designate the characteristics of the powerful as evil and their own condition as morally good.
In his statement that 'in reality, of course, starting positions - such as wealth, access to education, and social connections - heavily determine the direction and final outcome of your life' and people 'lucky enough to have a good start will invariably finish ahead of the game' - with its ludicrously overstated 'invariably' - we learn the truth of SA's own ressentiment, bitterness, and, one worries, fundamental laziness. (Note to intelligent readers - be aware of anyone who too often holds forth with the words 'in reality', 'of course', 'as we all know' etc.)
Because SA doesn't appear to have the ability to turn his criticism into self-criticism (the telos of all genuinely philosophical criticality) and admit he himself is implicated in the problem of all he attacks, he's clearly unable or unwilling to acknowledge his own bullshit. Edith Piaf, who was born in a whorehouse and never physically fully developed, was scraped off the Parisian pavements in poverty, but she became a great singer through bloody hard work and thereby honouring her own genius. Frank McCourt, from an impoverished Limerick background, won a Pulitzer Prize at 66. Nelson Mandela because President of South Africa at 71, after 27 years moulding his soul in prison. Viktor Frankl survived the Holocaust before writing 'Man's Search for Meaning'. Unfortunately, because he doesn't deal with counter-argument, for SA, it tends to be, in posts like this one: sneer, provoke, caricature, supercilously withdraw.
To conclude, one of our favourite of Aesop's fables is 'The Hare and the Tortoise' (or 'How the flighty, superior, and complacent undo themselves and grasp defeat from the jaws of victory'). The tortoise - faithful to himself, non-stressed, and relentless - emerges in the end as the winner. Not because he, obviously, beats the hare, but because (which is the only thing any of us can do) be bests and overcomes himself.
ReplyDeleteBeckett famously declares in 'Worstward Ho!': 'Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.' Everything is degrees of failure, since perfection is for the gods. But people who achieve things keep turning up, keep surprising/reinventing themselves, and are forever exceeding their limits. As the Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott once told us, the goal is to get out of bed every morning and one day create something 'self-astonishing'.