# Choice and effort By [Veresa](https://paragraph.com/@dongdo) ยท 2021-11-08 --- The fact that one person would discuss such a topic as choice or effort, and that another person would be willing to join in such a discussion, means that they have probably unconsciously accepted some premises. These premises are so natural that they are accepted by default without any prior discussion. What are these self-evident premises? 1. That we are in a society of equal opportunity and that choosing A or B is a purely personal matter. 2. We are in a society where the distribution is based on ability, and hard work can make you move up the ladder. Is that right? Do these premises hold true? Are there really so many opportunities, and you and others can also make choices in these opportunities? When I was a student, there were students who did very well in their studies and went to teacher training, coal or oil universities because their families were poor and went to these schools without tuition fees and sometimes with a living allowance. Since the results have been enough, why they do not go to choose a year of 5000 tuition (now more than 10,000), 400 accommodation, 1200 food costs of famous universities? Do they have a choice? If you work hard, you can realize the dream of X country (please fill in the blank at X), I have already discussed it in "Some Tweets about Hard Work", so I won't repeat it here. Of course it's not equal opportunity, and of course it's not distributed according to ability. That's the real human society, and that's where its complexity comes in. Since the premise is not so solid, the discussion behind what choice or effort is not much sense. Because on my observation in the construction site for so many years seen, people who have a choice do not need too much effort until there is no choice; people who do not have a choice must be bent on efforts, efforts until there is a choice. You can set the people you have seen around you to this structure, and see how many hits? So people who ask me whether choice or effort is important, talk as if they really have both, as if they have a choice when they want to and can work as hard as they want to, where does that happen? Now we have modified the premise of the discussion: opportunities are not equal and efforts may not be fruitful. Then, let's look at what the nature of opportunity and effort is. Since we are talking about opportunities, then there is the opportunity to grasp, whether you can grasp it, lies entirely in your own, and the next person has nothing to do; since we are talking about efforts, then efforts to the results, the ultimate success or failure, also lies entirely in your own. So, you are you are all you, cook your own food, eat, wash your own pots and pans. In this way, the opportunity and effort are pointing to yourself, are your full responsibility, what is the big difference? The difference between a pan and a frying pan, the back is all yours to carry. So, it is natural to conclude that: if you can carry it, you are awesome! Back can not, you deserve! The last decade, in the various discussions seen online, this view has always been very popular. You live in a mansion and drive a Mercedes Benz children sent to private schools, that is you grasp the opportunity to make an amazing effort, this is your deserved reward. Likewise, I live in a shed and ride a donkey kids site to play in the sand, that is I missed the opportunity, refused to study hard back then, this is also my deserved downfall. So, you are at peace with your situation and do not have a shred of sympathy for me. And I also feel this, the heart resentful, hesitant to blame themselves, or your Mercedes tire puncture a hole? In contrast, the ancients to be a little earthy, the concept to be a little backward. The philosopher Fan Jian of the Northern and Southern Dynasties said a famous quote that has been passed down to this day: "People are born such as a tree flower, with a branch, all open a tip, with the wind and fall, owning the curtain falls on the mat, from the wall about the fence falls on the side of the dung." The meaning of this passage is that the situation of a person's life is like two flowers of a flowering tree, both growing on one branch and both opening on the same flower tip. When the wind blows down, one falls on the cushion of the rich and famous, while the other floats down to the toilet. This passage is often dragged out of secondary school textbooks and crusaded against as a negative view of life and fatalism. Not so, these words are reread today and reveal many interesting points. In contrast to equal opportunity and achievement through hard work, Fan also presents a model of the human world as he understands it. In this model, heaven does not speak, nor does it care about anyone in particular. It only prescribes that flowers should bloom and die, and the wind should rise and stop. As for the petals being blown off by the wind, it does not care where they fall. It is because of this indifference that there is a possibility of mutual understanding between petals and petals. The petals that fall on the cushion do not feel that it is because they are great, but at the same time they are well aware that they are equally likely to fall into the toilet, so they have sympathy for the petals that fall into the toilet. The petal that falls into the toilet will certainly feel pain, but still can accept, because they are not deliberately targeted, nor did they cause such a situation, there is a higher and greater existence unintentionally caused such a situation, this kind of thing is true for everyone, so in the misfortune there is also fair existence, not to resent the petal that fell on the cushion. If it were today, it would be a different scene - the petals on the cushion sternly chastising the petals in the toilet: Why didn't you choose to grow out at the height in the first place? Why didn't you choose a different wind? You fell into the toilet and could not climb out, did you really put any effort? Why didn't you try to float out with the fart? At this time, the servant came to clean up the house, shaking the petals off the mat and sweeping them into the garbage pile. Lying in the garbage, the petals began to cry: If I had chosen to land on the hair of the honored guest, how could I be in this state now? I blame myself for not trying, I am a waste ...... I think that guest should be a bald man. --- *Originally published on [Veresa](https://paragraph.com/@dongdo/choice-and-effort)*