If your interest in the HBO TV Series Succession goes beyond Shiv Roy's turtlenecks, then you'll be pleased to know that Succession Season 3 is coming out soon.
In the second episode of Season 2, Shiv is having a conversation with her father Logan Roy on who will take over his media conglomerate 'Waystar Royco.' He tells Shiv that for her to take over as CEO, she needs to undergo months of training. Following is part of their conversation:
LOGAN: So... here's how I see it. Come in. Six months with Gerri, six months with Karl. Hong Kong for, say, another 12. Uh, Berlin, or London. Management training program for six. Come back, spend 12 months alongside me. And when you're ready, I'll step aside.
SHIV: Wow, Dad, that's a lot of months.
LOGAN: It's an appropriate amount of months.
SHIV: Also, management training program? Roman's COO. You have a toddler with a hard-on for chief operating officer, and I'm going through a management training program?
LOGAN: You're a young woman with no experience.
SHIV: A woman. That's a minus. Well, of course it's a fucking minus!
LOGAN: I didn't make the world!
The world is unfair, and Logan Roy didn't make the world.
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We like to talk a lot about second chances. Late last month, we had a post about Expiation and Revival and it was predicated for the most part, on the idea of righting wrongs and having a second chance.
But there's something we also come to learn about life: it's full of you-have-to-get-it-right-the-first-time-or-not-at-all situations. This may sound profoundly unfair, and it is indeed. There are certain things that are so exacting that you can't possibly get them wrong at all.
For instance, you get only one chance to make a good first impression. Should you screw up, then it becomes near impossible to change that initial perception given that first impressions are most lasting.
And this is something a renowned philosopher had thought of and written about centuries ago:
He who has not first laid his foundations may be able with great ability to lay them afterwards, but they will be laid with trouble to the architect and danger to the building.
- Niccolo Machiavelli.
In my native tongue, there is a saying that goes like this: "ngari ndiri sorry." Loosely translated, that means someone cannot hit you with a car then tell you "I'm sorry" since most likely the damage is both permanent and often irreversible.
And this goes further to cement our argument that life sometimes gives you just one chance. Not more, not less. Just one opportunity and that's it.
* * *
Sometimes in this life, you have to simply say it right. Get it all right, or nothing at all. Much as it is true there is a time and place to try again.
