Of Taster's Choice, the Quarrymen, and Success

Russell Christoff had been a struggling actor and model for twenty years. He worked, but never attained much success.

Then one day in 2002, while at a store looking for Bloody Mary mix, a jar of Taster's Choice coffee caught his eye. Christoff instantly recognized the mostly-concealed face of the man on the jar's label, savoring a cup of freeze-dried java. He saw himself!

You've probably read Christoff's story in the past day or so.

In 1986, he spent two hours posing for an advertising photo shoot. He was told that his image might be used in some ads and he was paid modestly for his work. That was that...until his 2002 grocery store discovery.

Yesterday, a jury awarded Christoff $15.6-million, to be paid to him by Nestle, makers of the coffee brand, "for using his photograph without his permission and profiting from it."

Russell Christoff isn't a struggling actor or model any longer.

But for all that money and in spite of our societal values, Christoff didn't suddenly become a better actor or model. Apart from the Taster's Choice label, I'm unfamiliar with his body of work and I'll wager that you are too. But I can say with some certainty that Christoff is pretty much the same guy on the day after his big payoff as he was the day before.

This story is in the news at the same time I've been thinking about success and when, or if, it arrives in people's lives. Just yesterday morning, I was reflecting on the talented athletes, executives, artists, writers, and others I've known or read about who were every bit as good as those who attained what our society calls success, yet spent the bulk of their lives in underappreciated obscurity. They haven't lacked in talent, work ethic, diligence, or even, contacts. What they have lacked is opportunity.

Some talented people have extraordinary opportunity just slip past them. Sometimes more than once.

Eric Griffiths, age 64, died yesterday. As a teenager, the Scotsman, who spent a good deal of his life in the north English city of Liverpool, was in a band called the Quarrymen. Among the other members of the band, two of whom Griffiths played with, were three guys named John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison.

There is no way of knowing whether Griffiths would have become part of the reconstituted Quarrymen destined to be known as the Beatles. But when that transformation happened, he had already left Liverpool to join the Merchant Navy.

In 1997, it was Griffiths who instigated some of his Quarrymen bandmates to get together again. They became a staple of Beatles-fan events around the world. Last year, the Quarrymen recorded a CD. This past November, Griffiths learned that he had pancreatic cancer. He died two weeks after the Quarrymen CD was released, some fifty years after the band first formed.

It might appear that success never came to Eric Griffiths. But I'm not sure that conclusion is warranted. A profile of him, appearing in a Liverpool publication, has this:

Mr Griffiths's youngest son, Danny, 31, said: "The whole family are
devastated by the loss of my father, but we take great comfort that he enjoyed
life to the full.

"My dad took great pleasure getting together once again with the
Quarrymen and travelling the world playing their music."

That sounds like a successful person to me, a person who'd found his niche in life, prominent or not, wealthy or not, and enjoyed doing his best.

I wish Russell Christoff well and I'm happy that Taster's Choice is giving him his due. But I hope that he enjoyed acting and modeling even when he was struggling. I hope too, that he will continue enjoying his profession even with all that money.

In one of his songs, Paul Simon wrote of the joy he derived from doing what his soul led him to do, make music:

I was playing my guitar
Lying underneath the stars
Just thanking the Lord
for my fingers
For my fingers

Easy for a multimillionairre to sing that way, you might think. True. And perhaps Simon wouldn't derive so much joy from his music without the worldly success it has brought. If that's the case, I feel sorry for him.

I know lots of people who are successful without being wealthy, prominent, or powerful. They're people doing what the God Who made their souls has led them to do. They're followers of Jesus. One of their tribe, another man named Paul, who lived two-thousand years ago, wrote once:

...I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to
have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances,
I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having
plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through Him [the God revealed
in Jesus Christ] Who strengthens me. [Philippians 4:11-13]

If you and I can learn to surrender to Jesus Christ like that, God will free us to be and do our best and we will be successful, no matter how the world measures us.