The fault is not in our stars

A treatise on the merits of commitment, effort, and persistence in pursuit of success.

It’s Sunday, March 17. I don’t know that I’ve ever, in decades of columns, written one on a Sunday. It’s got nothing to do with religion (which I eschew) and everything to do with the fact that Sundays are fundays at the Hackworth motorcycle, goat, llama, and guitar orchard. But today seemed like a good one to write on a subject near and dear to my heart that is unfortunately out of style: the relationship between effort and reward.

These days, the fashion, especially on the postmodern academic left, is to poo-poo work ethic as a bad thing: a racist, potentially fascist remnant of colonialism and all of its attendant issues. If, as the current thinking goes, one comes up short at something, especially if it’s possible to make dubious claims of oppression, failure is the result of structural issues rather than insufficient effort. Merit, in fact, is considered a dog whistle for oppression among this crowd.

Well, allow me to retort.

Those of you who watch Science Friday on Howlin’ will be familiar with the audio from the video clip above. It’s my rendition of the hot licks guitar solo from the Steely Dan song Kid Charlemagne, originally performed by the great Larry Carlton.

The 65 seconds in the video above are the result of years and years of effort and persistence. I felt bad about how long it took me to get this under my fingers until I had the chance to ask LC himself about it in a Zoom class that I took from him. During the class, this song came up, and he spent some time explaining to us how he put the solo together with various scales, chord tones, and chord outlines—on the fly.

When it was time for questions, I raised my hand, and to my considerable surprise, he called on me. LC is a very nice person to fans, but he’s not known as a particularly warm and fuzzy person when it comes to advising fellow guitarists (ask Steve Lukather) so I just might have peed myself a little when I realized that he was looking at me, holding my guitar, and expecting something intelligent to happen. Though my mind was frozen in panic, my mouth worked well enough to blurt out, “Was it hard to actually play?”

Though I’m sure that it was just a matter of seconds, it seemed like an eternity under Carlton’s deadpan gaze before he broke into a smile and admitted, “I have to go back and listen to the record every time I think I’m going to have to play it at a show.” The solo, as he explained, may have just taken two takes in the studio, but it took years of work to be able to create and more practice to continue to pull off.

Carlton went on to describe his decades-long practice regimen in detail. His message was that talent is the bare beginning; the rest is about work. The harder you work, the better you get. It’s not complicated. Carlton told us that he often found people who praised his talent to be off-putting because, in his view, it diminished what he believed to be much more significant: his work ethic.

I agree with that. I know exactly how he feels. Native talent is a matter of chance. A work ethic is earned.

I have done many things in my life with passion, but the five that are relevant here are writing, climbing, music, things with two wheels, and physics. Four of those were very hard for me. Writing was the one thing that kind of came naturally (I’ve never experienced writer’s block). But I’d have never gotten anywhere in any of them without a lot of work.

In my 25 years as a lecturer in physics and astronomy, whenever I was introduced to someone new, the nearly invariable response was along the lines of “Oh wow, you must be smart!” Good manners require that one take the complement for what it is. But smart, at least in my case, had nothing to do with it. From the moment I decided to embark on a career in physics (and before, as I will explain), it was a desperate effort to claw and scratch my way through the work required.

One of my issues with physics was a poor background in math. I went to elementary school in the 1960’s, when “new math” was being introduced. I was one of the kids who was unable to make this transition. This is why I have so much contempt for recent math educators who foisted “common core” math on kids a decade ago. I know how the kids feel about being upended by ill-conceived pedagogy. If any of you EdD geniuses see me coming, you’d best cross the street.

Years of disconcerting failure followed my elementary school difficulties in math. When I took the ACT in high school, it came back with three scores in the 30’s and one of 17 - in math. The guidance counselor thought there might be something wrong with my brain.

When I entered the University of Kentucky in 1974, I had to take remedial math classes as a prerequisite to any of the science courses that really interested me. Because of this, I nearly had to abandon my lifelong dream of pursuing science. The low point came when I was barely able to pass one of these remedial courses. I stewed over this for a while, at first just feeling bad. Then, over time, I started getting mad. To my knowledge, there is no such thing as a math/science gene. The fault was not in my stars; it was in me.

This was the most profound epiphany of my life. From that moment on, I was free.

I spent some time combing the used book store a few blocks from my apartment for math textbooks. I started with grade school math and worked my way through algebra II and trigonometry. It took some time, but eventually I was able to cover enough ground on my own to enroll in Calculus I.

There ended up being no curve in that particular class because some asshole smoked every exam. I happen to know for a fact that individual accomplished that feat not by virtue of some hotshot high school math program but with textbooks from a used bookstore and elbow grease.

In physics, beyond a certain point, it doesn’t really matter how much native talent you have for the subject. Things get really hard. The only thing that varies from person to person is exactly when plan A doesn’t work anymore. In some ways, it was a benefit to me that I had early difficulties because I got a head start with the tools—confidence in discipline and effort—to keep moving forward.

After a few years, I was confident that, given some time, I could figure out any reasonable physics problem on the fly, just like LC figured out the solo on Kid Charlemagne on the fly in the studio during the Royal Scam sessions. I understand his disdain for the term “talent.”

Motorcycles and climbing were the same way. I had no native talent for either activity. Whatever modest accomplishments I managed in these sports were solely due to effort and persistence. That’s it. There was no secret sauce to success in either the vertical or fast worlds. It was all about ass-busting (literally) hard work.

These days, I’m trying to establish myself as a performing guitarist. I have my moments, but there’s a long way to go. In the studio, where there’s no pressure to get things right on the first take, I’m OK. But playing live is a whole new beast, especially as a one-man band paying technical pieces to backing tracks. Once that click starts, you’re locked in, and if you screw up, everyone knows it.

Some shows are better than others, but the average level of quality increases with each new gig. Persistence, work, and effort. That’s what it is. A bit of fearlessness doesn’t hurt either.

One accidentally useful outcome of performing with backing tracks (as opposed to a live band capable of switching things on the fly to cover screw-ups) is that one must learn to improvise. You can fix mistakes with the next notes you play in most circumstances. This has led to me developing a nascent jazzer’s ability to take an idea and run with it. So, in adversity, I’ve discovered the key to another lifelong dream.

All of this is a mighty wordy way of making a point: the relationship between effort and reward is real, and it’s the most liberating in the world. You don’t have to be anything really special to succeed in most endeavors if you are just willing to work hard and not get overly discouraged at speed bumps along the way. Your race, socioeconomic status, etc. matter way less than the amount of elbow grease and persistence you are willing to bring to the table.

You might not be able to run a 3-minute mile without the right genetic makeup or become a full-voice soprano as an adult male, but things like that are at the extremes of human endeavor anyway. Even with everything lined up in your favor, the odds of success are low for some things. Not that many, but a few, for sure.

This is why my head explodes every time I come across another DEI-obsessed nimrod whose stock-in-trade is disparaging merit. Those people want you to believe that work and effort don’t matter because of the systemic inequalities that they allege permeate modern life.

Do these exist? Yes, in some instances. Are they barriers to success? Perhaps again in some cases. But there has never been a better time or place in all of the history of humanity to follow your dreams than right now in this country. And anyone who’s telling you otherwise is selling you snake oil for their benefit rather than yours. For all of the DEI crowd’s talk about slavery, they are the ones encouraging a modern form of slavery in the form of perpetual dependence on others—generally themselves.

Decades ago, one of my oldest friends handed me a beat-up acoustic guitar and inspired me to learn a difficult piece: Classical Gas. “I think you can pull it off.” That encouragement made my life better on many levels. It freed me from the constraints of things I could not control and taught me to get after the things that I wanted with persistence and elbow grease and to not take “no” for an answer.

So ignore the putzes who tell you that you cannot succeed. You go out there and get after your dreams. I think that you can pull it off.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.