Libby Lazewnik

There’s no getting around it: people like to feel important. This basic human need can play itself out in different ways. If you happen to be a megalomanic dictator, you’ll probably order twelve-foot-tall pictures of your face to be plastered on walls and billboards everywhere. You’ll have armies regularly drilling in perfect formation for your pleasure and exotic delicacies flown to your table at your whim. Everyone who comes near must kowtow in obedience to your will.

Driving through traffic the other day, I noticed a bumper sticker on the car ahead of me. This is what it said: It is what it is UNLESS YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Plenty of food for thought right there. “It is what it is” implies a certain resignation or fatalism. Indeed, there are some aspects of life that we cannot control or even alter in the slightest.

We live in a meritocracy. While name recognition certainly helps in politics, you don’t have to be a Bush or a Kennedy to win an election. In business, you can start out in a firm’s mail room and, through sheer effort and ability, rise to the top. Both science and the arts feature individuals who came up out of obscurity to shine. In virtually every field, what you can do trumps where you came from and which family you happened to be born into.