Lessons from Hamilton, Part 1
What the musical can teach us about work.
Lessons from Hamilton, Part 1
This is the first in what I envision will be a series about the professional lessons we can learn from Hamilton, the musical. I’m not sure that Lin Manuel Miranda’s intention was to make Hamilton a thesis on professional lessons, but so many of the songs resonate with me in this way (almost all of them, actually). I’ve thought about this for a long time, and I’m happy to finally share the first (in what I hope will be several parts) of Lessons from Hamilton.
“SATISFIED”
You’re probably thinking, what on earth can a song about a missed love connection teach me about work, but here is the thing - the first time I heard “Satisfied” I wasn’t thinking about romance at all. I was thinking about ambition. My own ambition, actually, and honestly this song brought tears of empathy and understanding to my eyes.
There is a point in “Satisfied” where Hamilton dismisses a question about his patronage saying “there’s a million things I haven’t done - just you wait” - while this is a throwback to the opening number, this makes “Satisfied” about more than romance.
From that point on, “Satisfied” became an anthem to the person you want to be - a potentially unattainable satisfaction around your own success. I have often wondered if you asked the people who have inarguably succeeded if they feel satisfied if they’d say yes. Would someone like Sheryl Sandberg - a successful professional, author, philanthropist - tell you that she is satisfied with her achievements? Or does success forever fuel the desire for more - more impact, more influence, more challenges? When you really make it, do you have the self awareness or self confidence to know you’ve made it?
For Alexander Hamilton, his confidence and pursuit for the next thing is probably part of his eventual unraveling. Which is a lesson in its own right. Perhaps knowing when you’ve made it is the key ingredient to holding onto success. But is that satisfying?
Back to the romance - in the song, Angelica is discussing the mental math that leads her to not to pursue Hamilton romantically and instead let her sister have him. As an ambitious professional woman (I said it), I find myself also constantly doing this mental math. So many decisions are weighed against my ambition - where I live, if I should start a family, when I should take vacation and for how long, when I wake up, when I go into the office, how I prioritize my days, how often I log on after hours - the list is endless. Sometimes, this has led me to make decisions that really sucked in the moment as a trade off for what I believed to be future gains. Sometimes those gains materialized and sometimes they did not.
I’ve written before about how I don’t have a five-year plan. What I do have are a series of age-based goals - things I want to accomplish by certain age milestones in my career. When I hit one, I start thinking about how to achieve the next one. Often, after achieving one goal, I have to redefine future expectations. My professional goals are aggressive because my age-based goals are aggressive and I am working backwards. To get where I want to be at 45 there are certain places I need to be at 35.
But there is no clear end - there isn’t a point where I’ve identified an age-based goal that is the target state. I want to retire early - but I want to retire so I can pivot to new pursuits. I’ve thought about a PhD in women’s studies, diving deeper into philanthropy, and finding ways to change the world for the better. You know, just small things.
Back to Hamilton - Angelica realizes early on that Hamilton will never be satisfied. That his wandering eye intellectual curiosity will prevent him from ever feeling content with the life he is living. Hearing this song for the first time I felt both heard and terrified. Am I, too, destined to a life that always feels incomplete? Hamilton is not a happy story - is the life of all ambitious people similarly destined to a self-sabotaging end?
For my fellow ambitious women and men out there - how will we create the space of acceptance for ourselves to find a point where we can be satisfied? When are our achievements and accomplishments enough? What does that look like?
These questions are so hard to answer because who we are and how we perceive the world changes often. That end goal will shift over and over throughout our lives and careers. All I know today is that I am not satisfied yet - but if I achieve satisfaction (and I so strongly hope I do) I’ll let you know.