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"Maybe. But Maybe Not."
If I can do it, anyone can.
Haven't we all said that at one time or another?
We utter it like a self-evident truth. But it's not true at all, because it implies the engine of achievement lies solely within the individual's control, no context required. That's never the whole picture. Rarely are two people so identical in character and circumstances that what one is able to do the other can also do by equal determination.
In my more simple-minded days — a period extending from birth until yesterday — I fell for the easy equation that if I earned a college degree in spite of all my hardships, then anyone could. After all, our family was poor. I'd lost my father while I was in high school after which my brothers and I were raised by a single mother with only an eighth grade education. We had no car and lived in a rural area with no public transportation. That meant I had to hitchhike 28 miles round trip every day from home to the local college and back. Moreover, I had to work to pay every penny of my tuition. It wasn't awful, but it was no stroll on the boardwalk, either. So if I could do it, slacker, you can too. Case closed.
But I was focusing only on my rough spots and not looking at my many built-in advantages.
To begin with, I was white (a fact, not an apology) and thus had no racial barriers to contend with; I was a six-feet tall male; both my parents were emotionally nourishing and totally supportive of my getting an education; I loved reading; I had a fairly good mind for retaining and applying facts; I lived in a home that was already bought and paid for by my father's savings and life insurance; my mom, despite her slim income, covered all the household expenses, including groceries and, I'm ashamed to say, did all the housework; college tuition was cheap ($150 a semester for four years); and hitchhiking was common and relatively safe for guys my age. Moreover, I was incentivized to earn good grades and stay in school to avoid flunking out or dropping out, either of which would have almost certainly led to me being drafted into the Army, a fate worse than a quick death.
But if I had had a sister with exactly the same upbringing as I did, her gender alone would have annihilated the “If I can, you can” argument. Or if I had been crippled, or lived on a less traveled road, or been unable to find work, or been emotionally shaky.
On the other hand, if my imaginary sister had been like the girl in Bobbie Gentry's song “Fancy,” her beauty and desperation would have likely gained her riches and social prominence far greater than anything I might have expected from my pedestrian college degree. In case you don't know the song or its story line, here it is: Fancy's sick and dirt poor mother spends her last few dollars to buy her 18-year-old daughter a slinky red dress “split on the side clean up to [her] hip” and gives her this memorable career advice, "Just be nice to the gentlemen, Fancy/and they'll be nice to you.” And it worked. As Fancy reports: “I got me a Georgia mansion/and an elegant New York townhouse flat.” Even at 18, I looked like hell in red, and I had the social graces of a badger. So Fancy's, “If I can, you can” example would have fallen flat with me.
I understand the impulse to use one's own experiences as a yardstick for measuring and judging the ambitions and efforts of others. And I'm not trying to give slackers a rationale for not achieving what they want and are capable of. But in advising people on how to get ahead, there are all sorts of variables to take into account other than race, gender and hard work — matters such as motivation, clarity of one's end goal, emotional traumas, unseen obligations, fatigue, depression, intellectual limitations, ease in social situations, etc. One's own success story can be inspirational and even instructive to a degree, but it's no substitute for customized counseling.
(Please send your comments or questions to stormcoast@mindspring.com with “And Then There's This” in the subject line. And thanks for reading.)