Why not having an opportunity does not exempt you from achieving; Nor does it give you a right to succeed.

Lucas and I were recently driving back from a tour of a possible venue for our upcoming wedding. If you’ve ever gotten married, you know that wedding venues are hard to find and are not cheap. The entire affair of getting married seems to me like more trouble than it needs to be. This place (which will remain unnamed) will cost us $3800 to rent. This is not including food or linens or anything else that one needs to have a proper wedding. We were hoping to negotiate down to $1000.

We lost that negotiation.

Anyway I digress. So we are driving back from the venue and he says, “Jesus! $3800! That’s B.S. It’s not fair.”

I hate that phrase “It’s not fair.” It feels like the pleading of a beggar, or the lack of responsibility of a whining child.

The definition of the word ‘fair’ I am using right now is: free from bias, dishonesty, or injustice. Was he calling the price of the venue unjust? Did he feel like we were being discriminated against? Should I believe that the party planner at the venue decided that he was going to steal our money?

The answer is no, on all counts.

Many people throw out this phrase carelessly and without any real thought of what they are saying. It’s petulant and disgraceful to the power that you hold as an individual.

Everyone who uses this phrase is so concerned with getting their ‘fair share’ or having a ‘right’ to things, that they never take the time to consider WHY they have that right. They certainly don’t take the time to see if they can use their own skills and means to get it.

They whine and protest about what they deserve without considering where it comes from. I’m sorry to break it to you, but these things that you have right to do not materialize out of thin air. Someone made them. Someone is giving you their time to perform a service. Someone is sharing their knowledge with you.

If I ask them, WHY they feel like they have the right to an education, could they give me an answer that doesn’t involve someone else doing something for them for nothing in return? Just take a minute and think about it.

These people think they have a right to information (information does not exist in nature!), or the right to a shot in the blogosphere (are you kidding me?!).

I hate to do this, but lets use education as an example. (I’m going to start using ‘you’ instead of ‘they’ just because it’s easier. Please know I am not actually talking to you!)

You have a right to a free education. So, you must need teachers to teach you all of these facts and ideas that they have taken years to integrate into their consciousness. If your education is free, than I imagine that we expect these teachers to spend their time instructing us for no pay!

Some may say they want to pay them with tax dollars?

If we are to let the government pay for them, then they have to allocate money to them. They have to allocate our money to them, regardless of whether we have children in school, send our children to private schools, or even have children at all.

How much should they give to education? How much should teachers get paid? Can you give me a good number? Can you prove this is the right number?

Of course you can’t. Without supply and demand, we are at the mercy of the small group of people that make choices for this country; those that usually have no business making such decisions in the first place. I don’t know about you, but I want my children taught by teachers who are compensated based on ability and talent. I want them to be compensated based on supply and demand, not the whim of the government. I am willing to pay top dollar for a good education.

Having free education only sets our children up to fail, since there is almost no incentive for teachers to be the best.

They should do it out of the goodness of their heart you say? I would agree with you. Except I have yet to see any ‘goodness of the heart’ used to pay for food at the grocery store.

Come again?

There are some children who can’t afford it?

Do you want me to sacrifice the excellent education of MY children so that all of your nameless and faceless children can also have an education? This way, we can all get not-so-great education and all is fair in the world! After all, why should my child get first rate education when yours can’t? They should both get the same kind of education. I mean, it’s only fair, wouldn’t you say?

This is by far the most evil train of thought that exists. What we are talking about is sacrificing one child so that another child can have some of what the first child has. Who determines what all children should have? Just because one child is more lucky than the other child, doesn’t mean that the second child should have a right to the first child’s life. It also doesn’t mean that the first child is guaranteed to succeed. It just is, and we can’t change that. We can’t make everything in the world completely the same no matter how hard we try. Plus, why would we want to?

Now regardless to what you may think, I am not a child hater. I care for children. I love children. It breaks my heart to see a child in a circumstance that is so dreadful only to be made worse by the fact that they had no choice in the matter.

However, I cannot judge the right to the best life possible of one child born into riches, for another child born into unfortunate circumstances. I can’t dictate what a teacher should or should not do.

What I can do is raise money for these children. People would voluntarily give to charities to help educate children who have no other means of obtaining knowledge. There are tons of teachers that honestly teach just for the sake of teaching. The knowledge that the child now has a better future is the value that they get from offering their time.

However, this needs to be a voluntary choice. It is not their duty to be our slaves, only because they chose to pursue education as a career. We should not take them hostage just because we are the bigger bully. We should not steal the resources of the more fortunate, nor should we force people to give alms to the less fortunate.

This is the same for your blog or for your business. We all struggle. Not because it’s healthy, but because there are so many great writers and businesses out there. We have to make a name for ourselves. We don’t have a right to a fair share of traffic. It’s not ‘unfair’ that Thinktraffic or Chris Guillebeau gets all of the business while I sit here penniless. They paid their dues. They earned it. They deserve it.

You have to fight for what you deserve. As a human being, you deserve happiness. But you have to fight for it.

The only thing you have a right to is your life. What you make of it, what you do with it, what you get out of it is your choice. Do the best that you can based on your ability and you will succeed and be happy. Sit there and whine about what’s not coming to you and you will fail and be miserable.

If you could put it to a vote to the general population (GENERAL) and ask them whether or not Chris Guillebeau should ‘share’ some of their traffic with you because you were a little guy and you needed a chance, I bet most people would say yes. Please try to see how despicable it is we’ve been trained to think this way. Just because Thinktraffic did a kick-ass job at creating an empire doesn’t mean that we have a right to tear a little bit of it off for ourselves.

This is America people. This is the land of choices.

What good has it done to giving our citizens choices, only to take those choices away at the whim of the ‘majority?’

Once you take away their right to choose, you take away their right to live.