An anonymous author once wrote,
"Success is directly proportional to effort." My parents
and coaches told me that hard work pays off and there is no substitute
for it. If you put in the necessary effort, you get the desired
rewards, wins, awards, and recognition. Despite this upbringing,
however, my life experience makes me think otherwise. No matter
how hard I worked at basketball practice, it seemed the girl who
slacked off scored more points and got more league honors. No
matter how much I studied, it was the guy that got drunk the night
before the test that got the better grade. What's wrong with
world today is how the wrong people seem to get all the right
things. The "wrong" people are the lazy people with
no work ethic that get ahead in life without putting forth any
effort. They somehow get the same benefits as others who work
extremely hard to earn them. Our world is supposedly based upon
the principle that to succeed in life one must put forth the necessary
effort, a lesson many children are taught. If this is so, then
how are people who put forth minimal effort getting the maximum
rewards that supposedly take much effort and hard work to attain?
There is the argument that some
people are just naturally smarter, more athletic, or more talented
then others, so they do not need to put in the same amount of
effort as others do. But if it is in fact effort that determines
success, then the person putting in the most effort should achieve
the success and the natural talent level of the competitor should
not matter. Depending on belief of its existence, luck can also
be considered a cause of this flaw. People can sometimes "catch
a break" and end up getting a reward that they otherwise
should not have received. A person could get a promotion over
a co-worker because he or she just happened to be outside having
a cigarette at the same time as the CEO of the company. The person
was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time and
the co-worker, who deserved the position more through this work
and effort that he put forth for the company, did not attain the
success he put the effort in to earning.
I believe that in the world today success is not proportional to effort. Many people who do not deserve success get it anyways and those that actually put in the effort to attain success are left disappointed. Being naturally gifted and lucky should not be reasons why people gain success. I still choose to have a strong work ethic because I firmly believe that win or lose, reward or no reward, recognition or no recognition, it is always best to give maximum effort in everything I do, because then when I do succeed I know that I have truly earned it and can take pride in such successes. But how much effort have I put into things and not achieved success because someone else who put in minimal effort achieved the success instead? It is something that is wrong with the world today. There is something wrong with the fact that my strong work ethic can get me somewhere in life but laziness and luck could possibly take me further.