TIME AND CHANCE

“I have observed something else under the sun. The fastest runner does not always win the race, and the strongest warrior doesn’t always win the battle. The wise sometimes go hungry, and the skillful are not necessarily wealthy. And those who are educated don’t always lead successful lives. It is all decided by chance, by being in the right place at the right time.” — Ecclesiastes 9:11

For some reason, I recently just heard about the word ‘self-made’. The concept as I have learned is used to describe people who achieve or have achieved success without coming from a family of means or privilege. Their success is attributed solely to their efforts. I do believe that making effort — hard work, consistency and the likes are important to achieving success, I, however, do believe it’s not in exclusion to privileges.

In his famous book, Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell tells the story of Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems. From an early age, Bill happened to be an incredibly smart kid. His father talking about him said, ‘he wanted to know everything about everything way before he should’ve even known he wanted to know’. Bill had perfect scores in his SAT and was voted “Most Studious Student” by his graduating class in High school. Bill is considered one of the ‘most critical players in the computer revolution’ and some have even referred to him as the Edison of the Internet. Joy wrote and rewrote many computer languages including much of the software that allows access to the Internet today. I’m sure you understand what I am trying to say about Bill Joy already — an incredibly smart kid who went on to make a mark in the world of computing and by extension the world. But did Bill Joy become a critical player in the computer revolution because he is a genius? Certainly not. How many geniuses have we heard of or even know personally, who haven’t done anything significant with their lives? So why is Bill’s story different? Bill’s story is not quite complete as Gladwell points out, without talking about his experience at the University of Michigan. In 1971, the University opened its new Computer Center, the same year Bill joined the University. At this time, the University of Michigan had one of the most advanced Computer science programs in the world, this was at a time computers were rare and expensive to get access to. Being a student of the University afforded Bill the opportunity to spend lots of hours with the Computer. I should add, Bill didn’t choose the University of Michigan because of its advanced Computer program, prior to his admission, Bill knew nothing about Computers.

I believe that there are no success stories without privileges and there are no self-made people without the gift of opportunity, which really means there are no self-made people at all. I believe at some point everyone who has been able to achieve any level of success got the gift of a chance at the right time. Even if nobody gave them a chance, life did through various means and circumstances.

King Solomon who had a reputation for seeking an understanding of life events ran into an obstacle in his quest to explain why some achieved success and some didn’t. The fastest runner doesn’t always win the race he said, and the strongest warrior doesn’t always win the battle — so the best don’t always achieve success. The wise sometimes go hungry, and the skillful are not necessarily wealthy, those who are educated don’t always lead successful lives — being smart doesn’t guarantee success, skillfulness at a thing doesn’t mean success at it, education might give an edge but that’s about it. Solomon concludes that it is all about opportunity — It is all decided by chance, by being in the right place at the right time. It is as though opportunity is a leveler that minimizes the difference between the most skilled and just-skilled-enough, the genius and the average. With an opportunity everyone can do incredible things.

My point is, things happen that aid people on the path to success, things they have no control over. People are fast to talk about the obstacles life threw at them on the way to success but often completely oblivious of the privileges it gave. Littered on the journey to success are privileges without which it’s impossible to achieve success. Without discredit to the efforts of the self-made, there were privileges that aided you — you can choose not to consider them but you are indebted to them and they only have one demand of you.

I live in a part of the world where nothing protects the right of a child to education but I am privileged to have gotten an education and a fairly good one, the decision to give me an education is one I had no involvement in. I have parents who value education and could afford to give me one but I also have mates who didn’t get such opportunity; they did nothing wrong just like I did nothing right. Just circumstances beyond their control. Now you see, in my story, no matter what obstacles I face in life on my journey to success, it gave me something. To some child in another part of the world it might not be a privilege, it is for me. In my journey, an education has become one of my little breaks among the hurdles in my path. In my unfolding success story, I am indebted to life for giving me parents who value and could afford to give me an education just like Bill Joy is indebted to the advanced Computer science program at the University of Michigan which gave him the opportunity to put in the hours to learn so much about Computer programming.

There are things that go in our favor without our efforts, events we didn’t even know were happening. Bill didn’t know how the decision to further his education at the University of Michigan would impact his life and what’s more, he probably wasn’t involved in the decision. So, you have been able to build a successful brand, business, organization, whatever it is, you can’t claim the credit for all success, not taking anything away from your success journey; it will be quite a stretch to take all the credit. You probably weren’t the only one who pursued that idea, but you happened to know someone who knew someone who partnering with brought the idea to life. You had parents who supported your dream, the government happened to be giving out loans to start-ups about the time you had that idea. The difficult Director in the agency you needed approval from happened to have just been changed when your application came in, you were narrowly just within the eligibility bracket for the government-sponsored scholarships, I could go on, little breaks here and there. If you claim you got nothing at all but attribute your success to sheer hard work and determination (even strong willpower is a gift but I’ll let that pass).

There are several hardworking and determined people around, who like you got nothing but still have nothing. You happened to choose the ‘right school’, got in at the ‘right time’. Even the seemingly negative situations turned out to favor your course in a way even you can’t explain, only for you to look back and be grateful that things happened the way they did for had it not, you wouldn’t have discovered that you had in you this potential your world now celebrates.

Being a practicing and believing Christian, my faith colors what I am about to share with you. Many months back, I was in a conversation with some friends and while we talked, one of us shared a story of twins who at birth were adopted by different parents. One, we’ll call her Katy grew up in the United States in the home of a Christian couple while her twin, Perry grew up in the Asian region of the world. Katy grew up to know the Lord, while Perry grew into a different religion. Now you must understand that just being born in Asia or the Middle East, for instance, decreases your chances of hearing the gospel, obviously because Christianity is not the predominant religion in those regions. That also explains why there are missionaries. The story led to the question of whose fault it is that Katy grew up in America and Perry in Asia. The question eventually led to a statement that helps me drive home my point, “It is nobody’s fault. It is just the way it is and that is why those who have been privileged to hear the gospel must tell those who haven’t” someone said in response to this question. And true, this is how the gospel has spread from one person to another, from one city to another — those who have heard told those who haven’t. I believe we must live our life also on this precept, those who have been helped must help those who haven’t by sending the elevator back down. This was Jesus’ mandate to His disciples — He didn’t expect them to ponder on why they happen to be living in the days He walked the earth, why they were chosen to be His disciples and by extension the first hearers of this gospel, He certainly didn’t expect them to take credit for it, He only expected one thing — tell someone else — extend the privilege.

My submission is that there are no self-made people just privileged and privilege thrusts on the privileged a responsibility, one thing it demands is that the privileged extends the privilege. It is futile to seek to understand life’s distribution of privileges, King Solomon says it's pointless, taking the credit is being ignorant and ungrateful but this one thing is right, help those who along your path have been stopped by the obstacles you never had or you were privileged to be able to overcome. This way, the essence and meaning of success takes a new course, far from what we have known — is success truly what we claim it is?

I have downplayed the role of effort to make us see what’s more important, our neighbors — everyone and anyone who you are in the capacity to be of help to. Perhaps, seeing how much we have been given will make us realize how much we ought to and can give also or what do you have that you have not received?