Joyce Carol Oates tells a great story about what it takes to be successful.

In 2014, she was teaching a literature class at Princeton University. The group was reading Tim O’Brien’s classic short story “The Things They Carried.”

The book, based on time O’Brien spent as an infantryman in Vietnam, catalogs the physical and emotional burdens carried by each member of a platoon. The story is memorable for how it indirectly conveys the sacrifices made by soldiers.

Oates asked the students: “Would you have liked to have written that story?”

All hands in the room went up.

“Would you have liked to have lived the experience that allowed you to write that story?”

All hands came down.

Oates said you can’t blame the students. Everyone wants to be successful. No one wants to suffer.

Oates told the story in a speech at the New York Public Library in which she made a similar point about William Faulker’s The Sound and the Fury. Faulkner wrote about a persistent nightmare sparked by his daughter’s death.

Faulkner’s “deeply wounded personal history went into the dream. And the dream goes into the novel.” Oates speculated: “If his daughter hadn’t died, he may not have written that novel.”

It’s a reminder of how loss and hardship can inspire great work.

It’s also a reminder that success in work and life often hinges not on what we want to happen, but what happens to us and what we do with it.