Since an especially unfortunate car accident in November, the world has learned that Tiger Woods is a serial philanderer. This tale disappoints from every angle. Take your pick. A devastated wife, a shamed family, a superstar knocked violently off his pedestal, the publicity-mongering of women whose relations with Tiger became their meal ticket, the interruption of a historic athletic career, the disproportionate media frenzy, the millions of disillusioned fans, the predictable condescension from America's moral majority, and even Tiger's sloppily covered tracks.Considering the plethora of more pressing problems across America and around the world, Tiger's travails and trysts with cocktail waitresses and porn stars are of little interest to me. It's not just that the scandals of rich and famous people cease to surprise; even worse, we have come to expect that many more celebrities are either cheaters, philanderers, corrupt or otherwise engaged in morally questionable behavior. It's a cynical view, built over decades of watching our heroes fall from grace.
I don't really care about celebrities or their problems. They are in fact just people with an extroardinary attribute, and otherwise ordinary problems. What does bother me to a high degree is what these sordid stories tell us about the human condition.
The soiled thread that holds together a diverse array of luminaries like Bill Clinton, Kobe Bryant, David Letterman, Eliot Spitzer, and now Tiger Woods is their inability to find happiness and fulfillment from reaching the heights of money, fame, and power. These are men who performed at the top of their game to achieve goals beyond the reach of most mortals. They attained the American dream, on many occasions relying on nerves of pure steel. Most of us thought Tiger had it ALL.
Tiger is the best golfer to ever walk this earth in the long and storied history of the sport. Even so, he has the potential to get even better. He ostensibly had the ingredients for a stable social life and family life, with a beautiful wife and children and a supportive network around him. He is a highly intelligent man, raised very specifically and intensely for global success by his parents. Tiger was adored the world over as a rare athlete, a breaker of racial barriers, a champion of hip multiculturalism, style, and youth in a gray-haired, funny-pantaloons-wearing white man's game. He wielded his club to drive straight into sport's most exclusive clubhouse, and brought many green newbies with him. His influence on golf is outsized, because the way Tiger played since his professional debut was nothing short of transformational. The PGA could go on without Tiger, but it would be a shell of its former self, limping to the putting green with fewer fans, less revenue, decreased attendance and Nielsen ratings, and a broken spirit. Despite all of this, Tiger was not satisfied. He had to throw it all away for a few moments of pleasure, and the reckless danger that was no doubt part of the allure. Now his family is destroyed, his career is on the rocks, and his legacy is irrevocably tainted.
I have long thought that fame, fortune, and a successful career cannot buy happiness. To the contrary, the constant attention and pressure to maintain or increase that attention will play with a person's mind, giving them an outsized sense of worth to the rest of humanity for something such as the ability to hit a ball with a stick consistently well. Those with anything but the strongest of minds will inevitably fall prey to some form of psychological trauma from this. One common result is the delusion that normal rules do not apply to them. The opportunities for rich celebrities to succumb to various temptations outside of the "rules" such as sworn marital fidelity are ample, and more accessible than they are for the common man. Most husbands cannot count in the millions the number of women who know their name and would be willing to sleep with them. Tiger could, and he also decided to begin testing that proposition.
Nobody is talking about the saddest aspect of the Tiger Woods downfall. The real tragedy here is the insatiable nature of the human existence. If Tiger couldn't have it all and keep it, nobody ever can. His slip and fall could have been easily avoided. He could have delayed marriage until later in his life or chosen not to marry at all. Being a single young playboy golfer would have been par for the course, buns intended, a lifestyle that wouldn't have carried the same crushing weight of the world's moral judgment that cheating on a wife does. He could have sought therapy or other forms of help. He could have filed for divorce first and sowed his oats later. He could even have taken a break from golf to get himself together quietly. Best option of all, he could have kept his pants on. Instead, he chose a path of poor choices that would damage his brand.
There is an abject lesson here for those who stake so much of their life's efforts toward achieving fame and fortune: you cannot buy happiness with these things. When you have monumental proportions of fame and fortune like Tiger Woods, so much greater is the fall, and so much more fragile is the existence. Having it all is an illusion. We should stop worshiping this illusion, which continues to feed the problem. We should stop worshiping at the altars of fame and fortune themselves. Not only does it result in endless misplaced disappointments for ourselves. The facade will help lead to the destruction of the very celebrities we so cherish.
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