How much credit can we take for our success?

I’ll bet that you have heard it too, directly or indirectly. Usually a confident male telling how he and he alone for the most part is the reason for his success. No doubt great effort and persistence, plus other attributes, make a substantial difference in the outcomes of our lives. And who else, should an individual, get all wrapped up in, but themselves.

However, there is a lot more to any one’s success than their own individual efforts and abilities.

Let’s take a look at a few of them starting with day one.

We didn’t choose to be born or who our parents were who may have made us happen under very emotional circumstances. Were we healthy; too many babies are born with problems that handicap them for all their lives.

My parents were both white, and luckily, some folks who aren’t don’t have to serve as slaves any longer, but they, yet, don’t have full equality. Family finance can vary substantially and contribute, especially, to our success for a good number of years. Some children born in the ghetto, with only an unemployed mother who doesn’t have a lot of educational knick knacks that help get them into the education groove.

Those of us born in this nation, wealthy and not overpopulated yet, have many reasons to be thankful for that good fortune. The schools attended vary greatly in quality and quantity of services provided. Neighborhood schools vary a great deal. Were our parents able to provide extra cost opportunities in extra-curricular activities that contribute so much to future success. Were they able to finance higher educational opportunities? If not, were jobs available to make that possible at that point in time? Did original employment furnish the opportunity to learn more or was it a spot in a no benefits, fast moving, repetitious endeavor? Or was that first job a temporary, low pay and short stay.

Yes, a number of areas may have been totally your doing. You could choose how to live with purpose or adrift, what is important and what is trivial. We were able to give definition to our lives, but many of us had a great deal of help.

I could make this article so long you wouldn’t even have bothered reading it, if I had listed just the names of all the people who have smoothed the path for me in my life of 80-plus years. And I’m still getting help at the library, in my coffee group, from my wife and kids, the computer and the list does go on and on. Self-made man? Not by the hair of my chinny chin chin.

It is certainly our right to be proud if we have been successful, but we do have so much to be thankful for. Remember the old Indian comment about the moccasins walked in. It went something like this, “Don’t be too critical of another human being whose moccasins you haven’t walked in.”

Tags: community, seniors