On Adversity

Dear Michelle,

Something that may be useful to remember is that an easy life does not equip you with characteristics necessary to take care of yourself. If you constantly have to struggle to accomplish your goals, then you will be accustomed to such adversity, and will not shy away from "rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty."

Many people have never had to face this reality. They are given everything they need by their parents, or other people in authority. I know that in my case, I was a very intelligent child. As such, my teachers often let me get away with a lot of things that I really shouldn't have gotten away with.

Allow me to share with you an anecdote from my high school days. I had a tendency to blow off homework, mostly because I was lazy and I couldn't be bothered. Sadly, I was smart enough that even without the practise required by most people, I still got decent grades because I generaly did well on tests and in-class assignments. This led to one year in which my parents got a phone call from my English teacher. This was odd anyway, because I wasn't living with my parents at the time. But the reason she had phoned was because in the first nine weeks, I hadn't turned in a single homework assignment.

In the course of the conversation, it became apparent that according to the teacher's grading policy, I should have been getting an F, but the teacher was going to give me a C anyway because I was so smart, she just couldn't bring herself to flunk me. This led to a conversation in which the vice-principal of the school said to my father, "I think this is the first time I've ever had a parent upset because we aren't flunking the student."

But my father wanted me to learn that I have to work to achieve my goals. This is a lesson that I later came to appreciate; I took ten years to complete university because I had no study skills to speak of. I expected to coast through my classes on my intelligence, and was sorely disappointed to find that it didn't work in that environment.

But the point is that if you grow up having to earn everything you want, you will be able to accomplish your goals when you become an adult. Contrast this to the modern predominant method of parenting, in which you give your child everything he wants because it will make him "happy," and you see that we are raising a generation of adults who will demand everything and not want to do the work necessary to achieve it.

This is why I don't spoil you. I know you don't appreciate it now, but I hope that at some point later, when you are an adult and looking back on all you have accomplished, you will understand the gift I have given you, and appreciate it.