Effort: Overrated
Bootstaps: for picking yourself up by
Remember that Will Smith movie, “The Pursuit of Happyness?” In it, Will Smith is uplifted from his home on the streets of Philadelphia and forced to move to a posh, Beverly Hills lifestyle. He is immediately sent back in time to the wild west, where he wears shades and becomes an intern at a Financial Firm, while living in a bathroom. Finally, in the end of the movie, he cold-cocks an alien invader, only to discover that it was all a government conspiracy.
The moral of the story is that you can do anything if you just try hard enough. It is a lesson that many in America are trying to teach our kids.
Unfortunately, this “wisdom” is in fact a vicious lie. There are many examples of people who try hard and fail. Sometimes, having been taught to never give up, they try again, and also fail. Over and over, like a supid rat in a maze that has no end. Try. Fail. Try. Fail.
Manning loses again
You know who loses a lot? Football players. Most of them eventually lose every year, regardless of how hard they try. They’ve practiced till they’re perfect, and they’ve gotten all the good breaks in life, and own their own restaurants and what-not, and yet they almost always fail in the end.
Let’s face it. We can’t all be winners. There are a lot more dishes to be washed than dissertations to write. Sure, your friends all tell you that your band is cool, or that your stories are funny, or that you can act or otherwise have some sort of talent or worth. But in fact you are pretty much just like everyone else, and everyone else is trying hard too. It’s just a matter of numbers. You are destined for failure, and there’s not really anything you can do about it.
So what to do? A wise man once said “if you don’t try, you can’t fail.” How true. Why not just learn to love yourself for who you truly are? Go ahead and take that extra nap. No one is going to care. There’s nothing you can do that has any discernible impact on the world, so why bother? Instead of painfully sketching blueprints, or solving theorems, you could be rediscovering your love for Melrose Place. Have you ever watched Dallas? Now that is a classic show. You should check it out!
In fact, usually I try to write things I end with some kind of endingish thing. But why bother?
Leave a Reply