Everyone's a winner, right?

Have you ever noticed that only the people who are successful have been quoted saying things about how everyone can be successful? Surely they aren't the only ones who have encouraged others with their "You can do it, if you just believe" speeches. Of course people like Henry David Thoreau and Mark Twain and Thomas Edison think that everyone can be successful. If they worked their hardest and achieved their goals then anyone can, right?

Wrong! If we could all be successful then there wouldn't be any losers. Just think of a race, the whole point of it is to see who's the best. Well if there's a best then there's a worst. Someone comes in first place and someone comes in last. Sure maybe the winner was trying a little bit harder than everyone else but maybe they weren't. Maybe they just naturally had longer legs and a lighter body. In a perfect world we'd all be equipped with those long legs, but we aren't.

In a perfect world everyone would be successful. All the happy little skippy people in the world probably think "Well if we all help each other then we can all be successful" but that is just a stupid fairy tale dream. If we all helped each other no one would die, everyone would be happy, there would be world peace and everyone would have food while pretty whales swam happily through their beautiful oceans. Yeah, it's a great plan, but just like every other great plan, someone wont follow through with it and if one person doesn't follow through then the whole plan dies. Yippee!

Still though there is hope. If there are losers then there are winners too. You can be successful. You can even overcome the odds and be the one that everyone stares at with their mouths hanging open in awe. And if that doesn't work then there's always second place. Sure it's not winning but it's something. Maybe you wont achieve your dreams of becoming a millionaire but maybe you'll have a nice life living in a picture perfect suburb with a pretty car and a dog. We can't all be winners and losers either. Some of us have to be in the middle.

The point is that all of those successful people who say important things about success don't matter. Neither do parents or teachers or any sort of mentor in your life. All they really want is for you to work hard so you aren't a complete failure. Or maybe they say you can be successful so that you have some hope that maybe one day you can achieve your dreams whether they be to dig a whole to China or be a fairy tale princess. The important thing to know is we can't all be successful, but we can't all be failures either. Maybe if you work hard you'll get everything you've ever wanted and maybe you wont. Maybe success will just fall into your hands. Of course it's not fair and of course it makes no sense, but that's something we've always known. Life isn't fair.