Grit expectations

We credit our success, in urban India, to hard work and discipline, but these are not free-floating virtues. Merit is real, but so is luck. It matters that we acknowledge them equally

- Charles Assisi

I have worked hard; shown up on days when I would rather have rested. Done more homework than was required. Treated discipline as a virtue.

But if I'm being honest, I have also been lucky. That is the part of the story most of us rarely narrate.

The ability to work hard is itself a form of luck. In India, we confuse stamina with virtue. But stamina comes more easily when one has been well-fed as a child; when one isn't worrying about unpaid fees, or the lights going out. Growing up, these didn’t feel like privileges. Which is precisely how privilege disguises itself: as default.

Health is luck. I know this from experience. When I had a health scare some years ago, what followed was not just resilience on my part. People in my life showed up. I was in an organisation that rallied around too. Colleagues rearranged work schedules. Friends made calls I didn’t know how to make. Appointments were secured. I had access to the best care, largely as a result of this network.