The recent political “gaffe” by the President in which he stated that business owners didn’t build their businesses came just weeks after I finished reading an incredible book (which I mention below) and just days before I wrote this piece.  An overburdening in my schedule left this installment of “Letters” delayed… and for that I apologize… but the article is still timely and important.  Sadly, it is most important to those who will likely never read it.  To those who do, my sincerest thanks.

The super wealthy and highly successful frequently express strong entitlement to their disposition by claiming that all they have achieved is the result of their own hard work, that they never took any hand-outs, and that no one lifted them up to the top.  This seems to be their way of not only propagating the myth that “anyone can grow up to be anything,” but also to lay the blame of “not having” squarely on the have-nots.  Their song of sweet success by virtue of hard work alone is not only played out but entirely fictional.  No man is an island.

Beginning with the extraordinarily obvious foundation of education, those who have been fortunate enough to be born into social classes and/or locales that have access to decent public education cannot claim that no one ever gave them anything free.  Don’t be ridiculous.  Their public education was free… Well, not “free,” but it certainly wasn’t paid for by them.  Other members of society paid their federal, state, local, and property taxes, and in turn, provided all the area children with a public school to attend.  Needless to say, those who did not attend public school must have attended private or parochial schools which yielded bills footed by their parents or guardians.  So, beginning at age five (and in some cases younger), even the super wealthy and successful were taking their first hand-out: education.

After 13 years of free education, the “haves” then moved into their post-secondary years.  During this time, these individuals plunged deeply into a world swirling with an indistinguishable blend of luck and opportunity.  In order for a person to become wildly successful, they must have not only an often self-praised, good work ethic, but also the perfect storm of open doors and dumb luck.  Since luck decides opportunity in most cases, we’ll begin by looking at how lucky a person has to get to have opportunities at success.

Luck is as simple as being in the right place at the right time.  Setting aside any arguments about genetic sequences and chromosomal normality, the idea that the right sperm has to find the right egg and develop in exactly the right way (which is the first bit of luck people have), there are countless other pieces to the puzzle.  A person must be lucky enough to be born to parents who feed and clothe them, giving them the carefree existence they need to participate in the rudimentary stages of development and the ability to focus on their primary education.  As a student teacher in one of the worst areas of Philadelphia, I often encountered children who were too hungry, too angry, too stressed, or too deprived to focus on their math or reading lesson.  Many were neglected at home or suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after family crisis rudely awakened them from their 7-year-old lives.  Not being born into poverty, illness, or abuse is lucky enough.

Next, there is luck of basic geography.  The area in which a person is born and lives dictates the type of opportunity he or she has in terms of both education and local culture.  Not all school districts are created equal, and in many areas (including my neck of the woods) which side of the street you live on can make the difference between a thorough and competitive public education and a bankrupt school district marred by perpetual failure.  Even the best work ethic struggles to be sufficient enough a trait to pull someone out of the depths of socio-economic depression.  Rare is the individual who can use brute force to rise above that type of intensely stagnating woes and negative circumstance.

Moreover, the cultural subtleties of regions, languages, and histories impact people in far greater ways than anyone ever really perceives.  In his book, The Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell explains how the environmental influences affecting Asia came to make rice the staple of all physical and economic life, how the cultivation of rice affected political and social structure, and how the agricultural dynamics of maximizing a rice crop manifested into a culture that had not only specific social and personal commonalities but promoted mathematics as a fundamental knowledge.  Coupled with a language that treats numbers in a basic and decoded way (the number 33, for example, being 3-tens-3), Asian students end up with both the cultural and lingual benefits that put them at the forefront of the math and science worlds.  So, yes; Asians really are good at math, but not because they are smarter than other people.  Cultural implications, like the history of Asian agriculture and language development, dictate many features in various societies that give people an edge toward certain successes.

If a person is lucky enough to be born or raised with all the aspects most appointed to their culture’s version of success, the opportunity will follow.  People born to wealth (luck) will have the chance at superior education (opportunity).  A person who goes through their entire education with the son of a wealthy internet mogul (luck) will have unlimited access to costly internet time and top of the line computers (opportunity)… This person will grow up to become Bill Gates, a man who as a teenager was able to spend more than 30 a week doing little more than messing around on computers.

Today, Americans who now enjoy the tremendous wealth of their business ventures were born into a time when public schools were thriving, they entered post-secondary schools and jobs at a time when the economic world was giving birth to multinational corporations (while the government was tearing down barriers to their possibilities), and they stepped into the corner office just in time for the dispensation of the Glass-Steagall Act.  The culture into which they were born was changing, valuing financial gain over ethics, creating new avenues for corporate and investment business practices that in the past would have been frowned upon for immorality.

Did the wealthy work hard?  Sure they did, but so does the guy working three-jobs at minimum wage; so does the single-mother of two who is attending night school while working full-time and parenting alone; so does the guy serving you your drinks during happy hour.  The only difference between those who work hard to get by and those who work hard to get everything they ever dreamed of is how lucky they got and the opportunities that luck provided them with.

Do not let the rich kid you (or themselves, if you have the opportunity to intervene).  No man is an island.  In fact, when it comes to achieving great personal wealth and success, there are no islands at all.  No one gets where they are on grit alone.  Success is not the result of one person’s solitary path.  It is the sum of many, many parts… most of which can be boiled down to sheer luck leading to great opportunity presented and supported by the work of countless others.

So, the next time someone tells you that they did it all by themselves, without help or hand-outs, remind them that the help they received in life began when someone reached out and caught them on day one – cradling them into their first breath of air – and hasn’t stopped since.