Does Hard Work Pay Off?

Though now proud to call America my home, I was born in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, in a rural, semi-nomadic community with no modern amenities whatsoever. I grew up surrounded by people who worked very hard, but they never spoke of hard work as a moral virtue. They worked hard for one simple reason: if they didn’t, they wouldn’t survive. 

When I first arrived in the U.S., I used to hear Americans speak proudly of pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. In recent years, though, I’ve noticed a decline in the frequency with which my fellow Americans mention their bootstraps. The tenor of the national conversation about hard work has changed. A new belief seems to be spreading, especially Among younger, more politically progressive Americans: a conviction that hard work does not always pay off. (READ MORE: Snowflake Work Habits) 

Supposedly, institutional biases, corruption, and greed prevent hardworking people like me from reaping the fruits of our labor. It’s true, of course, that corruption sometimes occurs. Though I’ve won the respect and support of merit-based institutions like the Fulbright Program and the MacDowell Foundation, I’ve also encountered corrupt organizations that have misled, exploited, and abused me. These experiences are real, and I have learned a lot from them. They have not, however, shaken my faith in the idea that hard work always does pay off. They never will. 

Since such obstacles alone do not explain why some lose faith in hard work, I’d like to explore a few factors potentially driving this trend. 

The first is a failure to distinguish between two related concepts: “work” and “effort.” Physicists define “work” as the change of state that results from the application of force to an object or system. Built into the definition of “work” is the concept of change. Effort alone does not imply change. You can apply force to an object for years, but if your effort is met with an equal and opposite force, you will never get anywhere. You will have done no work. To work hard, you must apply leverage. You must think strategically. 

The second is a failure to distinguish between hard work and the mere idea of hard work. Recently, a woman complained to me that her son couldn’t find a job. When I asked her what kinds of jobs he was looking for, she said that he wanted to be a C-level executive. When I asked about his credentials, she said he’d never gone to college. She’d raised him to believe that hard work always pays off, but apparently she’d failed to make him understand that simply saying the words “hard work” over and over doesn’t actually get you anywhere — that you actually have to do something hard if you want to get results. 

The Hard Work Pay Off

This leads us to the third factor: an unhealthy fixation on external rewards. Almost two thousand years ago, Marcus Aurelius knew better. “It is not in our control to have everything turn out exactly as we want,” he wrote. “Our control and power are limited to our own thoughts.” But, he added, “When you control your thoughts, you control your destiny.” 

Too often, we assume that if we do not get the outcome that we want — if we do not secure the grant, or get the client, or land the job — then our work has not paid off. Too rarely do we realize that simply by doing what we can, approaching the client or submitting the application, we’ve already reaped the rewards of our labor. “I never lose,” Nelson Mandela once famously said. “I either win or learn.” (READ MORE: Claudine Gay: Another DEI Success Story)

If you accept that the presence of obstacles means that your hard work may never pay off, then you’ve already lost. Whenever you approach a challenge with the fear of failure, you instinctively hold something back. What you hold back may turn out to be the very thing that makes the difference between success and failure, hunger and satiation, life and death. 

The overwhelming majority of Americans used to understand this, not so very long ago. That’s why I feel so at home in this country, so honored and proud to call America my home. I’m troubled by Americans’ loss of faith in hard work, but I also trust that such a deeply rooted ethos cannot simply be eradicated from the culture overnight. Some Americans still remember. Many more teeter on the brink of remembering. I offer you this dispatch from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco to remind you of what you still know in your bones: that hard work always pays off. 

Itto Outini is an author, journalist, and Fulbright Scholar.

The post Does Hard Work Pay Off? appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.