Fear of success: when happiness becomes a threat

Source: Ancient advice: can we alter the wrath of fate?

"Amasis king of Egypt wrote to Polycrates, ruler of Samos: 'It is pleasant to hear of the success of a friend, but your great successes do not bring me joy, knowing that the divine is jealous... I have yet to hear of a man who succeeded in all his deeds, who was not ultimately completely destroyed... Therefore, heed my advice: think of what is most precious to you, whose loss would pain you most of all, and cast it away, so that human eyes will never see it again.'"

(Herodotus, Histories, Book III, 5th century BCE)

Explanation: Success anxiety: when too good becomes dangerous

This is the classic story of "success anxiety." Polycrates is a ruler who turns everything he touches into wealth. Amasis, king of Egypt and his wise friend, understands that such a streak of success is dangerous and invites the wrath of fate ("Nemesis"). His advice is brilliant and psychological: engineer an "intentional disaster" for yourself (throw a precious ring into the sea). Pay a "tax" to chaos, to soothe the primal fear that everything is too good to be true. The story ends with a fish served at Polycrates's table, containing the ring. The ring's return symbolized the impossibility of escaping a bitter fate, just as indeed came to pass.

In the image: the cover illustration for Pushkin's 'The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish.' Like Polycrates, Pushkin's fish does bring blessing and wealth, but greed destroys it all.

Perspective: The director's hubris: why we sabotage ourselves

Failure is humanity’s home turf; it is familiar, comfortable, and demands zero effort beyond self-pity. The real terror begins at the peak. When life actually starts coming together—the human instinct isn't to celebrate, but to fire inside the tank. Why? Because happiness is the most vulnerable state in existence—there is something to lose. Self-sabotage isn't a mystical curse, but narcissistic hubris: a person prefers being the director of their own tragedy to a passive actor in fate’s comedy. We don't trust the script when it's too good, and we kick over the bucket out of fear that it might get knocked over by chance.

Going Deeper: The intentional fracture: the Jewish wisdom of imperfection

Judaism has an interesting mechanism for managing this anxiety: "zecher lachurban" (a remembrance of the Temple's destruction). We break a glass at the height of a wedding, leave an unpainted square in a new home. This isn't just historical mourning; it's a psychological tool for risk management. We introduce a small, "intentional fracture" into the perfection to release the pressure. We know in advance that within every joy there is also brokenness, and within brokenness lies joy as well. We are not afraid of loss, because we know that loss is an essential part of achieving the good. Moreover, many Jews see the broken as part of the whole, as in the famous saying of Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk: 'There is nothing more whole than a broken heart.'

Culture: Banksy and the shredder: when art destroys itself

Banksy's work "Girl with Balloon." In 2018, moments after the piece was sold at auction for a record sum, a shredder hidden inside the frame was triggered, shredding half the canvas. It is the modern image of "Polycrates’s ring": at the peak moment of success and value, the artist (or our own subconscious) destroys the creation. We cannot bear perfection, so we shred it.