Its like déjà vu all over again

Recently a friend of mine posted this on facebook: “Hard work pays off. From time to time, you have won by sheer luck. But most of the time, you get the reward because you did the work. Good Morning.” This got me thinking.

How does hard work pay off? And if the formula is that easy why don’t more people follow it? I think to begin we have to define what the reward is? For most of us in this celebriality driven consumerist frenzied society, reward is greatly defined by what rappers rhyme about in their lyrics or what every housewife on the Real Housewives of Banality has or wants to purchase, from new lips to the that oh so perfect lapdog. They crave money, cheddar, moulah. Power and fame (infamy). Now we’ve always had a personality driven society. We are human after all. In ancient Roman people bought sweat from the gladiators thinking it would make them beautiful.

Rags to riches. You may not know Horatio Alger, Jr., but if you’re an American your very day-to-day existence is affected by this man’s work. He wrote many young adult books on how down-and-out boys might be able to achieve the American Dream of wealth and success through hard work, courage, determination, and concern for others. We all (especially in the creative, entrepreneurial sector) have entire mythologies about people who started out with nothing and who made themselves into huge blasting successes. JK Rowling went from welfare to billionairess. Tyler Perry went from homelessness to running his own multimedia-multimillion dollar empire. I even have such stories in my own family. I can’t count the number of times at family gatherings that I heard the story of my grandfather Dr. Island Lemuel Johns. A grandson of slaves born in 1892 who walked 16 miles from his hometown of Auburn, NC to Raleigh to earn a medical degree from Shaw University. All the while working odd jobs to make money. He died when I was 6 but I still remember being driven by the now parking lot on Patterson Ave and Fourth Street where his office was located, being told of his accomplishments. How can I live up to that feat?

So what does all this mean? That if I’m not the first black man on Mars that I’m a failure? A flop? A nobody? I think the problem is that we should measure reward incrementally and individually. I have a good friend whose philosophy is get it as quickly and as easily as possible. Of course I eschew his ideas. But we are economically equal. Materialistically he actually has more. So must I conclude that hard work is debunked by crafty laziness?

So in the end which side is right? Nobody. As always when it rains it rains on everybody. Some people work hard to get little, others work little to get a lot. That has no bearing on the course of action you must take. At the end of the day I may not have sold a million books (yet let’s not forget that) but I have worked hard on my craft. I have learned in great and small increments how to be a better writer, businessman, and person. It’s the struggle that makes you smarter and better. The difference I have noticed between myself and my get it quick friend is that he has not learned anything. He continually makes the same mistakes over and over. Like the bible says in Mark 8:36: For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? My friend may have riches but as quickly as the came they can (and have in the past) left just as quickly. For me the wealth of emotions, ideas, people that I have encountered working hard for my dream will enrich my life forever. My epitaph may never read "...he came from nothing to conquer the world" but I bet if I keep working hard I’ll (or at least that hard work) will be remembered long after Bravo and its legions of personalities have faded into dust.