I've Been Fortunate

maybe too much so

Published on June 10, 2005 By Gene Nash In Life Journals

I've been very fortunate in my life. I've never had to work.

Oh, I have worked. In my dilettantish flitting from profession to profession, alighting just long enough to prove I could accomplish and conquer before taking off for the next pretty flower, I've racked up quite an impressive breadth of experience. But the necessity of work is as foreign to me as "Debbie Does Dallas" is to the Ayatollah al-Sistani.

I don't know what it's like to have to do something you hate just so you can eat. I don't know what it's like to force yourself to get up every morning so you can keep a roof over your head.

Going to school is my closest experience to doing something I hated and forcing myself to get up every morning. I wasn't too good or diligent about that either. (One of my high school classes once had a trivia contest in which one of the questions was "When was the last time we saw Gene?")

I can analogize, I can imagine, I can extrapolate from what remotely similar experiences I have had. But that's not the same as really knowing, now is it?

In a way I've been playing at poverty. I've made it into a game to see exactly how little I can live on. (Shockingly little, in the final analysis.) But that's not the same as actually being poor. I always manage to have options.

If I've experienced poverty and deprivation, I must admit it's been by choice. There aren't too many people who doubt I could rapidly regain my riches with moderately little effort.

Why would someone be disappointed not to have experienced such pains and trials? I'm sure there are many "wax on, wax off" side benefits I'll never know. What of character building, and discipline? Those aren't just myths fathers tell their children to make the medicine go down.

Maybe I let this run its course so long because I wanted to know what most people go through.

But I've come to realize that playing at poverty can never compare to having no choice in the matter, those who always have options can't comprehend the desperation of the optionless, and making an intellectual exercise of experience inevitably removes one from the experience.

Maybe it's time to appreciate and accept my good fortune and blessings. I may in some part be missing out on the common human experience, but I think this is one I'm glad to do without.

Comments

joeKnowledge

on Jun 10, 2005

Personally, this is why I wrote 'Working hard does not necessarily mean making it'

People have the wrong perception of working hard. They might include working smart, making the right decision and other variables into working hard but the reality is that they do not fit into the idea of working hard.

Working hard is staying the course on something even when it is hard. This does not cover opportunities that you are given, support from family members, taking risk (taking a risk is a decision, not a result of working hard).

I met one person on the net saying that they ear 100,000 a year. Since this person was 17-18 I was wondering what do they do for a living to earn so much money. It comes out that there parents own a chain of stores and the money is just deposited into their bank account.

How much 'hard work' do you think he has to do than me? Who has the better chance of making it? Who has the better chance of getting the job I could have gotten and done better at, but he got because of connections?

I think people who earn a good living do not realize just how much was not based on hard work and just plain random statistics and most of all opportunity. Without opportunity you can work as hard as you want to, you will be hard pressed to move anywhere. Some thing working hard creates opportunity and it does to an extent. For example going to school and finishing opens doors for you that would have been closed. But it is not true that someone has to look at you and say, 'your hired'? Could they say that just as easily to someone else who is perceived to be the better employee? The only reason why I did work at an Architectural firm for 2 months wasn't just because I just got good grades, it was because of a program established to give me a chance and to show what I can do and gain experience in the field.

I harp on this allot lately because this world will not become a better place if people have this idea that anyone can make it when the reality is that only a few can actually do so (Can the economy really support everyone making it? 30,000 dollar a year jobs without deflation? Heck, can even most people have 30,000 jobs? Why are they just not available?).

There is, in fact, only room for so many people to have more than others The reason why communism fails (out of many) was that sharing the wealth just didn’t work because everybody ended up poor. There IS only enough room for a few to earn more that 30,000 a year.

Also, if you ever wonder who people risk their lives to come to the USA this is why: USA has more opportunity to turn hard work into something.

It is very important for those who do make it to make sure that they understand that the reason why they did was due to hard work AND opportunity. The two might intersect, but are not interchangeable in definition. Hard work and opportunity is separate entities that have a common overlap area.

There will always be war in Palestine because when you have no future you have nothing to live for. Countries end up having revolutions due to the fact that there is a large sect of the population that has no way of entering the economy or an opportunity to work hard and get a reward for that work. The USA is based off of a revolution of taxation without representation... why? You tax me, take money away from me, but I have no say in how the money used or how the country is run (meanwhile I have to work 3 times as hard to earn more to become well off, just for you to tax me even more, how do I exactly become a land owner then in order to vote if the money I would use to get the land always is being taken away?)

So you are fortunate to have been able to live the life you do. It doesn't come around very much and not many can get the opportunity to be there.

Gene Nash

on Jun 15, 2005

It comes out that there parents own a chain of stores and the money is just deposited into their bank account.

I wonder if they feel like adopting?

Seriously, though, I worry about a lot of our youth. They have so much "disposable income" just handed to them, they get a false idea of how the world works. It's not going to always be like that. They think they can spend and spend and there will always be more. What's worse is they think they deserve it, then feel ill used and get angry when it's not handed to them.

It's bad parenting, and it's sad.

I agree with most of what you said.

Opportunity and proper conditions do have to exist in order to succeed. "Dead end jobs" are such a reality that we've labeled them. People say all you have to do is work hard and you'll succeed. What does all the hard work in the world accomplish at "dead end jobs"? That's just one example. It takes opportunity to get into a position and then that opportunity has to be opportunity filled to matter.

There are just so many factors people don't consider. Another one is having a good boss, one who isn't a grade-A jerk. All the hard work in the world isn't going to matter if a person's boss doesn't like them and is out to show it.

Another factor people underestimate is just plain good luck. I see people whose initial success I analyze as a lucky fluke who from the momentum generated by that luck were then able to perpetuate it, who think they are somehow business and financial geniuses. The truth is, if they did everything they are now doing, but had to start from a different position, where they didn't have that lucky happenstance, they couldn't accomplish a quarter of what they have. They'd be just another low-level employee in a moderate paying job taking someone else's crap instead of being able to dish out their own.

Some people define luck as "preparation meeting opportunity," but that ridiculous. It frequently takes luck to even have the opportunity.

Let's say a person is in a dead end job with a lousy boss but they "work hard" and long anyway. One day someone sees that person and decides to hire them into a good position with upward mobility. Most "work hard" adherents would say "See, I told you all you have to do is work hard," but they don't see the thousands who do that but never get anywhere. The truth is it took a lot of luck for the new boss to happen upon that person, and then for that new boss to have a good opportunity available.

It's not a coincidence that fortune (from the Latin for "chance") means both luck and wealth.

I do think that to an extent opportunity and luck can be manufactured, but that requires a whole different type of hard work, and a skill set few possess (a skill set I wonder if acquiring doesn't ironically also require a certain amount of opportunity and luck).

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