Hard work hardly works? Part 1

We hear lot of idioms and phrases in our daily life.

Right from our childhood, later in high schools, colleges, universities, at home, or at workplace in our truly materialistic world that we are in, we have been constantly induced to believe in or have faith in, so we happen to come across these phrases / idioms / sayings :

Hard work always pays off!!

Hard work never fails!!

Good work or bad work, hard work only matters!!

Patience, perseverance and discipline matters in every walk of life!!

Indiscipline or indiscretion is not tolerated!!

>> And so on, and so forth!!

One fails to understand the true way to interpret these.

(Kindly excuse, I might use certain example of incidents, events, occurrences or references to international personalities to put forth my point of views here.  It doesn't automatically mean or imply I am trying to ridicule or leave my emphasis here from the truly Indian standards or happenings in the Indian sub-continent. If certain references literally mean so, I can’t help it, yaani!!).

Let’s take roughly 500-1000 years of world history or Indian history for that matter. Then compare it with the post 20^th Century socio-economic standards or living conditions across the globe.

Hundreds and thousands of our forefathers have literally shed their blood and venom in terms of their truly significant hard work, disciplined life style, enduring umpteen numbers of hardships, compromises or sacrifices en route achieving their perceived or not-so-perceived goals and objectives in life. Such compromises and sacrifices would have been in the form or like of their hard earned money, wealth, physical effort, rendering their valuable time so they gave their everything they could fully foregoing their mental, physiological, psychological at times biological well-being. 

Some of them were blessed with some sort of handicap (physical or biological perhaps psychological too!!). Despite their misgivings, they have put in lot of their efforts to see the real world that we are in.

Those who have their academic brilliance or excellence or the lack of it per se, managed to contribute to this world some way or the other through their findings, research and development with constant and continuous improvement (scientific or non-scientific, spiritual or non-spiritual, political or apolitical, amateur or mature), the list goes on.

Few could have contributed by their ethical or unethical ways and means, nature only knows, that we in our generation see and enjoy the results and fruits!!).

The results and fruits can again be enumerated to the hundreds and thousands of innovations and discoveries, human or inhuman adventures, literary marvels, some excellent performances in the field of arts and music or artistic theatrical on-stage performances (onscreen or off-screen),  the outcomes are in front of us to enjoy repeatedly.   Courtesy the most advanced innovation or discovery whatever you name it, the internet is here to stay forever so we can retrieve any data from the past by a simple google-surf or youtube archives.

In every walk of life one common liner that comes across is ‘hard work’.

At times we notice certain yesteryear discovery becomes meaningless in a later century (see the concept of writing letters to our near and dear ones, sending physical greetings to wish someone on his birth day or any other anniversary or send condolences on a sudden demise happening elsewhere), writing snail mail is history now.  Sending telegrams and telex is already history; and very soon sharing info via facsimile is going to be history.  Does that demean the very discovery or innovation of these facilities or tools suddenly becomes meaningless? What happened to the hard work that went behind such discoveries?

In every continent or nook and corner of the world, someone somehow works hard and sheds his / her blood to earn his living in any form that he can afford to or be blessed with by any means.

Tatas or Birlas, Ambanis or Marans, Bill Gate’s , Steve Bob’s or Mark Zuckerberg’s, Warren Christopher’s or Amarithya Sen’s, Tagore’s or Bharathi’s, Edward Snowdens or Julian Assange’s,  Subramaniam Swamy or Anna Hazare, Kuppammal or Suppammal, Kanniappan or Muniappan, Malhotra or Manmohan Singh, Chidambarams or Ahluwalias, MKarunanidhi or MGRamachandran, Tony Alexander or Naresh Goyal, Lee Kuan Yew  or Fidel Castro, Abdul Kalam or Albert Einstein, Ang Saa Sui or Mahatma Gandhi,  Ramaswamy or Kuppuswamy – I only managed to recall certain names from history books, there are umpteen numbers of individuals who have contributed by their work to this world -  this is nothing to demerit or ridicule thousands of others who have done their part globally. Regardless the nationality or their respective ethnicity and socio-economic well-being or the lack of these, one common liner that we can link is ‘hard work’.

You ask them ‘what’s their strength that they think they would attribute to their success’, something most commonly would come to their mind is ‘hard work’, however ethical or unethical the audience would perceive their work and outcome per se. 

(to be continued…..)