This isn’t news to anybody. It’s not a headline that you’ll see in the newspaper. You won’t see this on the 10 o’clock news. It’s so ingrained in our psyches that we don’t really think about the implications.
Life isn’t fair.
If you’re like me, you believe that hard work, determination, and generally doing good for others is the right path. I was always taught that you worked hard and good things would happen. You stuck with what you started. You helped those who needed help. You scrimped. You saved. You slowly and surely worked your way upwards. There was no get-rich-quick in my youth. Everything that we had, and everything that I had, came from hard work and sacrifice.
I’ve worked really hard to teach my kids the same principles. I’ve always believed that doing the right thing is vastly better than doing the expedient thing. There are no short-cuts in life.
But I look around and I see examples of folks who don’t have those same beliefs, and they’re getting rewarded (economically, socially, psychologically) for taking short-cuts. For “cheating” at the game of life. For not following the “rules”, these folks are getting ahead and I’m not just staying in the same place, I’m falling further and further behind.
Kevin Durant, and NBA player summed up my philosophy pretty succinctly:
Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. ~Kevin Durant
But I’m finding that it’s not true. The rules seem to have changed, or more accurately, are constantly changing. The core values that I’ve held for most of my life seem to be outdated. There are fewer and fewer people who play by the same rules that I do, and I often find myself sitting on the sidelines with those folks watching people get ahead who don’t subscribe to that work ethic.
It frustrates the living daylights out of me.
I’m not one to subscribe to a victim mentality. I believe that I have a lot of say in my success. While I know in my heart that God has a destiny for me, I firmly believe that I can’t just sit back and let things happen. I believe that opportunity doesn’t know unless you’ve built the door frame, hung the door, and are listening. It’s ingrained in me that you have to work for the opportunities to be presented, and then you have to keep working to achieve them. It’s pretty simple to me, success doesn’t just happen.
It’s the pursuit of happiness. Happiness isn’t guaranteed, you have to go out and pursue it. With my competitive nature, I envision hunting down happiness. Stalking it through the forest. Stealthily approaching it and capturing it. I’ve never envisioned just sitting on a park bench, eating chocolates, and one day happiness (and it’s cousin success) just meandering on over, sitting down, and then joining me on my life’s journey.
But I look around and I see that happening all the time, to people who I don’t see working very hard. To people who have squandered all the talents they’ve been blessed with. To people who baffle me as to why they should have success without working at it.
No where is this more evident that in the sports my kids are in. I’ve said it before, and I’ll be writing more and more about this. We are a competitive bunch. We believe that you go full speed in practice so that you know what it feels like. We believe that practices mirror the actual competition. What you do in practice translates directly to the field of competition. If you go at half speed in practice, why do you think you’ll actually go faster in a game?
We work hard. I’ve managed to pass that on to my kids. We’ve talked about the attributes that make you a great competitor, teammate, and leader. We listen carefully to the coaches, and work hard to determine what attributes and skills they focus on. Then the kids work really hard to hone those skills. We study the game. We watch films together. We talk about what works and what doesn’t.
Don’t get me wrong, the “we” is mostly the kids themselves. Sure, I talk to them about what’s going on. I’ll point out something a coach said in an interview on the radio after a game. I’ll illuminate a point from an article in the newspaper. But when it comes right down to it, I’m not the one practicing. I’m not the one in the weight room. I’m not the one on the practice court or field or track.
But I have watched enough of the practices where my kids are to know they are some of the hardest workers out there. They communicate with their teammates at a level seldom seen. They lead by example. They have fun, but by golly they are busting their butts on every play. Volleyballs don’t hit the floor when my daughter is on the court in practice, and when she gets in a game that practice turns into successfully saved balls that would have gotten by a lot of other players. The football drills that my son is in are full-out workouts. He hits with passion, he runs with strength, and he practices like he plays, with the throttle full out. On the track and the road, my runners have given it everything they have. They don’t walk during the workouts. They pump up the other runners through their humorous antics, but when the whistle or gun sounds they go after it at full speed. There is not slacking off with my bunch. On the soccer practice pitch there are no “off” plays. My daughters go after every ball, contest every play, and work to not only make themselves better, but to improve their teammates as well. They lead through their sweat, determination, and great attitudes.
And yet, they’ve all had moderate success in team sports. Where the coaches have the luxury of making decisions about who will play and who won’t, all the rules that we work by seem to be thrown out the window. The coaches talk about the attributes that they want in games, communication, speed, strength, adaptability. They extol the virtues of having a great attitude. Of working hard in practice. Being coachable. But when the whistle sounds and the games begin, those concepts are so often thrown out the window that it baffles me.
It seems like a different set of rules apply to the players who are getting reps on the field or time on the court. And I don’t get it.
More importantly, I’m a doer. I’m not one to sit by and just let things happen to me, and I don’t want my kids to be the sort that just have life happen to them. I don’t want them to feel victimized, and I certainly don’t want them to become victims.
As time has gone on, I’ve begun to question whether the traditional values of hard work, determination, and doing good for others is the right path. I’ve honestly questioned whether our society has passed me by. that I turned off on a dead-end road and have led my kids astray. That somehow I’ve taught them the wrong set of values and that they’ve been setup to fail in society as we know it.
I honestly struggle with that concern on a daily basis. It seems that I’m out of step with what’s going on around all of us, and I’m terrified that I’ve let them down by teaching them the wrong set of values for today’s society.
Yet, I know that the values that I’ve taught them are the right values. It’s society that’s gone astray. It’s coaching decisions that don’t take into account the character of the kids, the kind of decisions that allow kids in high school who have been charged with felonies who are on the field because “they’re too important to the team”. Kids in high school who are doing drugs who are knowingly being allowed to compete. Kids who are so disrespectful of others, including their teammates and coaches, that it’s embarrassing to everyone who comes into contact with them are held up as examples of athletic prowess and they’re made the stars of the games.
I do believe that sports are a reflection of our society, and sometimes they are the lens through which we see the best and worst of our culture magnified.
But it’s not just sports. It’s life in general where the guidelines that I’ve used for my life seem to be out of step. So much of what I believe seems to be disjointed from the way things are. Work hard and get ahead? Right now it feels like, work hard and get taxed into oblivion.
Take risks, pursue your dream, and stay determined and things will work out. I’ve seen too many examples where that approach has been ruined by somebody else breaking those “rules”.
There have been far too many days where I’ve just wanted to pack it in. To tell the kids to quit following all those precepts that I taught them and just start living like everybody else. Honestly, I’ve been tempted to say “screw it” and just start acting like the total jerks around me. Selfishly taking everything that I can get, being disrespectful, and making everything about me.
But I can’t. I know, deep down that I’m on the right path. While it’s not a very crowded path, maybe it never was. Maybe society isn’t really all that different from other times in history. It sure feels like things have gotten worse, but maybe this path isn’t for everybody. Maybe the few of us who can stay on this path are the only ones who keep society from totally collapsing. From crumbling into utter chaos.
I don’t know. It’s really hard to keep doing what I believe to be right, to teach my kids what it means to be a great person, and to watch all those other folks taking the easy route and succeeding. Frankly, I’m tired of scrimping and saving. I’m tired of doing without and then watching others getting part of the fruits of my labor so they can do nothing. I’m tired of folks who are not working hard to get results that should only be achieved through hard work and determination.
Life isn’t fair.
It’s not a cry of a victim coming from my throat. It’s really a statement of facts. It simply means that I have to work that much harder than some folks. It means that my kids have to keep doing what they’ve been doing times ten. Why should we bother, because I believe that it’s the right thing for us to do. We have the ability, and it’s about our pursuit of happiness (and it’s cousin success). Maybe it doesn’t mean success in financial terms. Maybe it doesn’t mean success in terms of accolades and awards. But it does mean successfully living out our destinies. Of actively pursuing that which makes us happy. That which makes us better people. That which makes us productive members of society, who can serve as role models to those kids (and even adults) who really haven’t had a role model like that.
Success and happiness aren’t something that just happens. They are things that you work for. Sure, there are examples of folks who have those two things thrown at them, but a few months or years down the road are they really, truly successful or happy if they haven’t worked hard?
So I’m going to stay the course. I’m going to keep extolling the virtues of hard work, determination, and doing good for others. I’m going to worry about my positive impact on people. I’m going to quit worrying about other folks who are getting a free ride. As my kids (who love it when I quote popular phrases–not) say, “I’m gonna let the haters hate”. I’m going to impact my small corner of the world and see if maybe, just maybe I can make Life a little bit more fair.
How about you?
