Charles Nevin: Life is fair... just look at this man's haircut

Success, always an elusive achievement, is currently exciting even more debate than usual. Some are musing on the disproportionate numbers of the privately educated among the successful in law, politics and the media. Others ponder the startling amounts of money accumulated by self-made people without the benefit of higher education. Yet more are worried that Michael Owen has lost it.

It might be useful, then, if I could provide some guidance and provoke some profitable thought in this area, not least because there could be a book in it, and books about success do tend to be rather, well, successful.

First, a couple of explanatory notes. You, being by definition an Independent reader, are by definition successful. I thought, though, that you might like to pass my advice on to a friend. Secondly, you will be wondering about my qualifications. Well, don't forget that the distanced observer has a calm clarity not always available to the committed participant amid the rising dust and clanging blows of endeavour.

This is confirmed by a survey of what some of the committed participants have had to say. Henry Ford: "If you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you're right." J P Getty: "Some people find oil. Others don't." Oprah Winfrey: "If you really want to succeed, you'll have to go for it every day like I do." The retiring Bill Gates, right: "Life is not fair; get used to it." John Sainsbury, founding grocer: "Keep the shops well lit." Unknown: "The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work."

You see? Not terribly helpful. Although, on reflection, I'm not sure a really successful and committed participant would be known as "Unknown". But it's with Mr Gates that I take most issue. For it is my contention that Life is Fair. The mistake is to concentrate on your own disadvantages. You should look instead for the disadvantages of others, even the apparently successful. Rather than the selfish consolation of counting your blessings, you can exercise compassion and sympathy, while guarding against smugness and condescension.

My working title is, "The Other Man's Grass Is Browner, Moss-Ridden And Isn't That A Molehill?". Just choose a person, or category of person, that you - or rather your friend - might be inclined to envy, and then consider.

Privately educated: imagine the agonising quandary for the Volvo owner who wants to fly a St George's flag, or two. And, please, those vowels. How would you be if people sniggered at your pronunciation of "innit"? You might not like labradors. Or Agas. Worst of all, you could have been, like me, educated at a minor public school, which doesn't even have the cachet of a bog-standard comprehensive.

Self-made: Christie's car boot sale unavailable. They have to work really hard, often with people who talk about "going for it every day". Lord Linley: what will the poor man do for decent furniture now? Princess Margaret: Lord Linley. WAGs: the offside rule. Tom Stoppard: turned down for a job on Fleet Street, poor fellow. Bill Gates: that haircut. David Cameron: saddle rash.

So, let us all calm down, relax - except you, obviously, Michael -and follow the wise precept of T S Eliot (all that adding up in the bank; inspiring Cats): "Success is relative. It is what we can make of the mess we have made of things."

No way to treat the inspiration of poets

Is it a coincidence, do you think, that we give the butterfly, our finest symbol of lightness and carefree beauty, such a hard time? Even the name comes from a myth that they steal milk. Hunted, netted, doped, pinned, and subjected to a Glen Campbell lyric: "Across my dreams with nets of wonder I chase the bright elusive butterfly of love": will the mistreatment never end?

In Norfolk, in an equally bad metaphor, 60 butterflies have just been released into the wild fitted with tiny aerials. And now we're making them in the laboratory in order to study their evolution, while we continue to destroy their habitats.

Is this any way to repay the inspiration of great poets, mighty philosophers and some of our best jokes, of which I give you but one: "Why couldn't the butterfly go to the dance? Because it was a moth ball."

Enough!

My instructive, if melancholy, patrol of the obituary pages is much enlivened by the subheading pithily capturing a life. Here are my current favourites to shuffle off by: 1. Freezer salesman who won the men's singles at Wimbledon on his only appearance in the Championships. 2. Seminal figure in the south London blues scene of the late 1960s. 3. Playful and prolific poet. 4. Paratrooper who relaxed with Barchester Towers during the battle of Arnhem. 5. Castro's official photographer who dropped all his film in the sea while chronicling the Bay of Pigs invasion. 6. Unconventional Hittite scholar. 7. British opera singer who settled in Seattle and danced the fandango to Mozart at the age of 80. 8. Geologist who specialised in the Antarctic and taught Sir Vivian Fuchs how to drive huskies. 9. Grandslam Wales Flanker. 10. Anthropologist who left her husband for a Masai warrior and affirmed the existence of an unknown hominid. More as they happen.