The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F_ck

And because of this, in a rare intimate interview in 2003,
a tearful Mustaine admitted that he couldn’t help but still
consider himself a failure. Despite all that he had
accomplished, in his mind he would always be the guy who
got kicked out of Metallica.
We’re apes. We think we’re all sophisticated with our
toaster ovens and designer footwear, but we’re just a bunch
of finely ornamented apes. And because we are apes, we
instinctually measure ourselves against others and vie for
status. The question is not whether we evaluate ourselves
against others; rather, the question is by what standard do
we measure ourselves?
Dave Mustaine, whether he realized it or not, chose to
measure himself by whether he was more successful and
popular than Metallica. The experience of getting thrown out
of his former band was so painful for him that he adopted
“success relative to Metallica” as the metric by which to
measure himself and his music career.
Despite taking a horrible event in his life and making
something positive out of it, as Mustaine did with Megadeth,
his choice to hold on to Metallica’s success as his lifedefining
metric continued to hurt him decades later. Despite
all the money and the fans and the accolades, he still
considered himself a failure.
Now, you and I may look at Dave Mustaine’s situation
and laugh. Here’s this guy with millions of dollars, hundreds
of thousands of adoring fans, a career doing the thing he
loves best, and still he’s getting all weepy-eyed that his rock
star buddies from twenty years ago are way more famous
than he is.
This is because you and I have different values than
Mustaine does, and we measure ourselves by different
metrics. Our metrics are probably more like “I don’t want to
work a job for a boss I hate,” or “I’d like to earn enough
money to send my kid to a good school,” or “I’d be happy to
not wake up in a drainage ditch.” And by these metrics,