Mean Street: Bruce Wasserstein and the Meaning of Life 
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2009/10/19/mean-street-bruce-wasserstein-and-the-meaning-of-life/ 
By Evan Newmark 
This is my Hallmark greeting card column, the one where I spout truisms about finding happiness in one’s family, friends and freedom -– and not in one’s fortune.

It’s a cold autumn evening — and as I write I listen to Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. I’ve been giving some thought to the recent death of Wall Street billionaire Bruce Wasserstein.

Not that I knew him. I met him once and that was just a few weeks ago. But when I started out at Goldman Sachs in 1986, Bruce Wasserstein was already a legend — a legend at age 38. And now he’s dead at 61.

Time is a jet plane it moves so fast
Oh, but what a shame that all we’ve shared can’t last

Bruce Wasserstein graduated from both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School. He was very smart and very rich. And if you ask Michel David-Weill or Joe Perella, they’ll explain that Bruce knew how to always come out on top.

He liked doing deals and apparently he did more than a thousand of them, so I suppose he liked what he was doing. 
But whether Bruce Wasserstein was a truly happy man, I don’t know. It’s, of course, none of my business. But still, it’s hard not to think about it.

Two of his sisters died prematurely, of cancer. He was overweight for much of his life. And he was married four times. 
You shouldn’t dismiss Bruce Wasserstein as just another screwed-up, overpaid Wall Street CEO — because he wasn’t. He was an icon, a symbol of all that is possible in a career on Wall Street.

And that’s why his early death should give anyone who works on Wall Street a moment of pause. 
Why do you do what you do for a living? Do you do it because you love it? Do you do it for the money? Or do you do it because you don’t know what else to do?

Many of you will find, as I did, that a life on Wall Street exacts a heavy price. You barely see your wife, and when you do you’re distracted. Your kids don’t know who you are. Your friendships consist of clever e-mail exchanges. And you never quite feel 100%. Two round trips to Beijing in one month will do that to you.

But often that’s the price you have to pay. It was certainly a price I thought worth paying, until I put away enough money — and decided it wasn’t.

Sundown yellow moon, I replay the past
I know every scene by heart, they all went by so fast

On evenings like this, I wonder if I was happy during all those years I worked at Goldman Sachs and UBS. I remember great colleagues and great clients and the occasional thrill of the deal.

But I also remember frustration, boredom and going through the motions. I remember the interrupted family vacations, the constant jet lag, the things given up and the moments lost.

That’s life, I guess. Doesn’t everyone complain about his job from time to time? 
But at least now, at age 44, I can say that I am a pretty happy man. This week my wife and I will mark our eighteenth wedding anniversary. And on any given day, I can take my young son to Central Park or play my guitar or write this column.

And that’s thanks to Wall Street. No other place on earth can give you the things you want so quickly — as long as you know what it is you really want.

Certainly, in his life, Bruce Wasserstein got many of the things he wanted on Wall Street — let’s just hope happiness was one of them.