One of the most popular myths in the USA is the one in which a person success against all odds by themselves. These are the ‘rag-to-riches’ stories told throughout the nation to give hope to those ‘without’ while boosting the pride of those ‘with.’

Yet as Malcolm Gladwell shows in his book “Outliers: The Story of Success” these stories are far from truthful. Instead they leave out very important details about how a person rose through the ranks – details that show that individual people own a ton more to their ancestors, the people around them and their cultural than perhaps they want to admit.

Take for example Canadian hockey players. If you look at the birthdates of all the professional hockey players in Canada you will find that an overwhelmingly number of them were born in January, February or March versus the other nine months of the year. Why is that?

Well in Canada, the youth hockey league determines eligibility based upon birthdates with a start time of January 1st. Therefore children born closer to the beginning of the year have longer to develop physically and mentally than their team mates who were born at the end of the year. This advantage causes them to stand out among their peer which gives them more face time with the coaches who like to encourage start players. As time goes on, the slight advantage of a birth date builds into a huge advantage that eventually leads to disproportionate birthday numbers mentioned.

In continuing along those lines Gladwell shows how ‘rags-to-riches’ superstar Bill Gates – the college dropout turn world’s richest man – owns his success not to his own work ethic, which does helped mind you, but to the opportunities given to him by his family.  As in, Gate’s parents put him in an exclusive preparatory middle school which just-so-happened to have both a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and the mainframe computer time to run it – something virtually unheard in 1968.

This slight advantage over others in his generation lead to various opportunities in high school for Gates to work as a computer programmer during the beginning of the computer revolution.  As time went on all of these choices combined to propel Gates to the forefront of success – something that could never have happened without the opportunities offered to him by his family and the location of his schooling.

It is as Dallben said to Taran in Lloyd Alexander’s “The Book of Three”:

“Nothing we do is ever done entirely alone. There is a part of us in everyone else…”

We are all interconnected to each other and to a Creator who is watching and working among us. Yes, we have the freedom to decided what we do with the opportunities presented to us – but the opportunities themselves are usually determined not by our own merits but by those around us including the Lord God Himself as well as where and when we are born.

We are not lone ships on an ocean but part of a tapestry woven by the Lord of Heaven and Earth.