This weekend, I stumbled upon the above phrase, and on my quest to find out its meaning, I was reminded of some valuable teachings. I’d like to share some of them with you here. But before I do, here’s a quick overview for the origin and meaning of the phrase, the “sword of Damocles.”

The story goes that Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse had a courtier named Damocles who was more or less a professional flatterer who lay around these opulent feasts saying nice things to Dionysius.

And once, he made a comment to the effect of, oh, how great it would be to be the king. And Dionysius said, oh, really? Well, if you want to know what that’s like, you can come sit in my throne, which Damocles did and Dionysius made sure that he was well supplied with opulent food and great service and cute waiters and beautiful perfumes and scented candles going.

And Damocles was thinking to himself, how very wonderful then, it must be and then noticed that Dionysius had also hung above the throne a gleaming sword, which was suspended by a single horsehair. And he then begged Dionysius to be allowed to leave the throne and to go back to his subservient position as a courtier and obviously got the point, which is that anybody who gets to enjoy immense wealth, luxury and power also is living under a threat.

extracted from an NPR interview with Daniel Mendelsohn

So, what did I learn from this legend?

1. Society has over-glorified fame.

More importantly, society has over-exaggerated the road to fame. Many successful people have a knack for making it seem that everything worked out perfectly and their fame was a result of fortunate events. I like to believe that genius is built, not made and that luck is nothing but the intersection of preparation and opportunity. It takes thousands of hours of grit and practice to become successful.

(Jack Gleeson, or King Joffrey from Game of Thrones, articulates this better than I can in his speech “I Hate Celebrity Culture” at Oxford Union.)

2. There’s no shortcut to success.

This is building on the previous realization, but from a different angle. The reason why Dionysius displayed no visible shock at the thought of a sword hanging above him was because, unlike Damocles, he had achieved the position of king after dealing with everything before it. You cannot simply jump from level 1 to level 5 without going through the other 3 levels, or learn calculus without understanding trigonometry first. That’s what Damocles did and he was unable to handle the stress and threat because it was completely new to him as a servant.

3. Don’t judge a book by its cover.

We’ve heard this phrase a countless times, but how many times have we truly thought about its meaning? Behind the superficial layer that we present to others resides a flawed, yet unique construction of our true selves. Most people stop at the former and don’t dig at the more interesting and real representation. It takes time, no doubt, but the journey of uncovering the facade and discovering the treasure that lay inside is priceless. On the other hand, sometimes a lot can be correctly presumed from just the outer layer, but the beauty is in knowing the why and how more than the what.

These are simple truths that we may encounter everyday, but in the constant stream of noise that we experience on a daily basis, we can sometimes forget these timeless truisms. It’s essential that we keep these in mind, as with them, we can be happy for ourselves and others.