I believe that someone who tries their hardest to achieve something is more successful than someone who achieves the same thing with no effort. I believe this partly because of my upbringing. My grandfather grew up in the depression, and to look at his life right now you'd never know it. He was raised in one of downtown Pittsburgh's two-room 'houses' owned by the mines and supplied to its workers; this was a time of iceboxes and pot-bellied stoves. His father raised rabbits in their basement to sell on the streets for pennies. My grandfather wanted to go to college more than anything. Unfeasible? Not to him. He joined the army primarily to take advantage of the GI bill, and through years of hard labor got a degree in Metallurgy from Carnegie Mellon Tech. A task like that wasn't easy for the son of a miner, who went to class in a one-room schoolhouse in the Ukranian district of a steel town as a boy. My mother, his third child, never married and never went to college. My brother and I were enough for her. She raised both of us, alone, in a three-room apartment on a busy street next to the bar she tended. Despite the run-down place and the microwaved dinners, I couldn't have been happier growing up. My mother would have died for us. Sometimes I think she did, a little bit, every Christmas when we recieved toys from the church down the street. Despite all of that, I know my mother was a success. My brother and I are happy, healthy, and moral people. She fought every day to make that happen. It took so much work for my mother and my grandfather to reach where they are today. They aren't anything special to look at. My mother still lives in the slummy apartment where I grew up, tending bar at the Elk's club. My grandfather lives alone, a widower, in a small house with a small yard in an insignificant suburb. These positions that they hold in life are meager, but their worth as people are just as great as the best-paid CEO, because they have overcome. And they have indeed succeeded.
