Opportunity, hard work, and cultural legacy

Finally I finished the book “Outliers” by Malcolm Gladwell. It only confirms my conviction about value of hard work, getting/seizing an opportunity, cultural legacy and its reality. There is no substitute for hard work and perseverance. Being good at math is not an innate ability inherited by the oriental people as stereotyped by some. US school year is 180 days (with a long summer break when kids from disadvantaged families regress even more) compared to Japanese school year of 243 days (35% more schooling). My father used to use an Assamese equivalent of the proverb “A sleeping fox catches no poultry”. He had left his remote village for a town 40 miles away (almost a different planet back then) to work and raise a family. The highest IQ does not bring success without hard work. Mozart, Beatles, and Bill Gates – no one could have succeeded without thousands and thousands of hours of practice or programming. Hard work has never killed anyone.

However, opportunity or missed opportunity comes from various aspects – when, where, and to whom one is born. My biological father was born at the wrong time at the wrong place. His book published in 1938 is listed in the US Library of Congress and at Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data. He left this world extremely poor at a young age and no one even remembers him.

At the same time cultural legacy of a place – fair or unfair – plays an important role in the life of a person. My daughter used a term “passive aggressive” to describe the people from the east. In Assamese context when someone offers someone something, the typical response is, “It’s alright if you don’t give me” ("Naholeo hobo" meaning “Yes, please”). People from the west have to be almost a mind reader to understand people from the east. This is what caused South Korean airline crashes in 80s and 90s.

By the same token, certain opportunities or advantages seem to come to some people because of the timing of their birth, color of their skin, etc. Many years ago, a lady at work had introduced me to the idea of “ugliness discrimination”. We all practice that to some degree. How many dark, ugly receptionists or secretaries - regardless of their qualification - we find in offices around the world? Malcolm Gladwell’s forefathers were from Jamaica and basically colored or “mulatto” folks (being a “mulatto” was an advantage). His mother was able to seize an opportunity and get out of that place. Eventually his parents moved to Canada. Malcolm Gladwell wrote the best seller, The Tipping Point.