None of these experiences, however, in any way broke my spirit. I simply refused to accept the values or judgments of the world around me. In order to keep any self-esteem, I had to retreat into my own fantasy world, where everything was good and everything was possible. I actually saw everybody’s rejection and disapproval as some kind of necessary character-building I had to go through before I could achieve something great and show everyone they were wrong about me all along. I also became a person who never gave up. In my own mind I would glamorize every failure as some kind of valiant effort against all odds, laudable just for the attempt. (“The Impossible Dream” was my favorite song growing up, and Don Quixote I saw not as a sad lunatic but as a real hero.) I’d also romanticize every small success as a major step in my inevitable march to some kind of great glory. Thus, for close to ten years following college, when my main business consisted of driving around all night delivering brochures to hotel lobbies, worrying that my old van would conk out, thus killing the business, I imagined myself not as the truck driver I really was, but as an advertising mogul building a solid base for a future display advertising empire and beyond.

Of course, I realized I might always stay a deliveryman. Even worse, I knew I could even lose that. I might lose my brochure clients and then I’d be a complete zero. Even when things started to get better, I was always aware that just one misstep and it could all be over.

When you’ve been on the bottom for so long, it’s hard to take success seriously. When people start calling you “Mr. Jonas” instead of “Howard,” it’s sort of surreal. When you see your picture on the front page of the New York Times or have people treat you with all kinds of respect because they read about you in Business Week or Forbes, it’s hard to take it seriously after so many years. It’s strange that people think you’re unusual because you don’t lock yourself away in a fancy corner office, still wear blue jeans to work, and answer your own phone. Really, nothing’s changed from getting chased home from school, booed off the stage, or working as a deliveryman. But the breaks have gone my way, so the fantasies are becoming true. Still, I know only too well that it might not have gone that way and even now it could reverse. That’s why I find it much easier to relate to those whom society calls “losers” rather than the “winners.” Frankly, I think we have a lot more in common.

Sometimes, though, if you just keep on plugging, the world changes enough that those who were out of fashion or broke one day are suddenly in vogue and prosperous the next. By the end of high school, the political climate (and I) had both changed and I was elected student body president. Also, my little advertising business was starting to make what I felt (though largely in my fantasy world) was a good deal of money. The first thing I did on getting elected president was appoint all the kids nobody liked as committee chairmen. The first thing I wanted to do when I started making money was to give it all away to others who were still on the bottom of the heap. These were the people I really could identify with and wasn’t going to forget now that things were a little better. Who knows, in the same position, maybe one of them would do the same for me. I started giving a lot to charity before I left high school.

I was reluctant, however, to give everything away. If I did, then how would I ever be able to save enough to invest and get really rich and really redress all the injustices in the world? But if I started to think like this, then maybe I’d just become selfish and out for myself and just like all the people I didn’t want to be like. This dilemma really bothered me.



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