I know what my dad would have said. Focus, work hard, and it will pay off. He often speaks in platitudes and idioms when I seek advice, and when I don’t. He did that for years—worked hard. Seven days a week working on cars in his shop, gone before I woke up and back in time for a late dinner. (“We’re more like Europeans,” he used to say. “They never eat before eight.”) I don’t know how he can believe the words he says, when it did not, in the long run, pay off for him.
