On Ashton and Opportunity

1:58pm Sunday, September 29th. The Mill Coffee House. Lincoln, Nebraska

So, I watched this thing a while back, it's Ashton Kutcher's speech at the Nickelodeon teen choice awards. When I first watched it, I hailed his brilliance and promptly posted the YouTube video on my Facebook page. It was met with a great positive response and, as a young student headed off into the "real world" after college, I took it as inspiration - work hard and in time, it will all work out. Well, the weeks have gone by and the media has had a chance now to run its fingers of greasy politics all over the speech and respond in a variety of ways. Conservatives have lifted up the speech as an endorsement of the "American Dream," saying that with a little hard work we can all be as successful as Ashton. Meanwhile, others have pointed out that Kutcher's argument seems to entail that if one doesn't become successful, it's because they haven't worked hard enough and furthermore, in his speech he condemned a culture that values physical beauty while conveniently forgetting to remind everyone that it's precisely this culture that helped to make Ashton - a straight, attractive, middle-class, white, male, a successful person in the first place.

It’s all a little complex, and ultimately the politics just twist Kutcher’s speech into something I  don't really think it was meant to be or communicate. I think there really is something to be said for hard work in the end and that doesn’t make me a capitalist monster. I don’t think Ashton meant the argument to be construed as: If you work hard then you will be successful, and this is the common misconception when it comes to the "American Dream." So, to be clear I will say this now – hard work will not necessarily make you successful and that is because life is not fair and the world isn’t always a kind place.

This aside, the argument was actually that opportunity (not success) looks a lot like hard work, and that’s the more fruitful discussion to have. My father always says to me that he and my mother work so hard because they want their kids to have the best opportunities available to them and that in anything we do we should try to give ourselves as many opportunities as possible. This, he says, is because it’s always better to have options. I’ve taken this seriously to heart (I swear that Nebraska is the “land of opportunity,” dad) and I am not nearly as disappointed in myself when I fail to be successful (whatever "successful" means, it’s a very tricky term) as when I fail to take advantage of a good opportunity. I think that’s the important part about working hard and being smart. It’s not about society deeming you successful, it’s about being whoever it is that you are and taking advantage of the opportunities that become available no matter your gender, race, sexual orientation, economic disposition or physical ability; a human being who doesn’t take advantage of an opportunity misses out on the opportunities that can follow.

And that’s the place I go in my head at the end of the day if I’m trying to figure out if I’m being lazy. Just to be clear… I can be as lazy as the next person. Nevertheless, this is my proverbial measuring stick. So, in a time in my life where I’m attempting to make something better of myself, trying to reach further, trying to be more (I have a sneaking suspicion that this “time in my life” either doesn’t end, won’t end or isn’t supposed to end) I think about hard work a lot and I ask myself often: What opportunity am I not taking advantage of?