When all’s said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it’s not so much which road you take, as how you take it.
Charles de Lint
There are different roads to success – some long, others not so much. Some roads are arduous and full of hardships, while others are relatively ‘easy’. However, at the end of the day, it is the way you go about the process that makes all the difference, not the process itself.
First things first, the fact that there is more than one means to the same end does not mean or justify resorting to unfair or unethical means. It does not mean you can bribe your way to a lucrative job or cheat to get through a challenging test. What this does mean is that each person needs to tailor their strategies to their strengths. No two people are alike, so there is no reason why their methods should be so.
To give an example, while someone with a sharp mind may not need to work very word to achieve their goals, someone less smart will probably need to take the hard road to get to the same destination. This does not mean that one road was better than the other; it is just that they both chose paths that were better suited to their abilities. And that is what makes success all the more savory, isn’t it? After all, what fun would it be to scale a challenging mountain if there was, say, a guidebook of hard and fast rules to go about it? A real sense of accomplishment always comes from doing things your way, keeping in mind your positives and negatives.
Charles de Lint is a well-known Canadian writer of Dutch origins. He once remarked: “When all’s said and done, all roads lead to the same end. So it’s not so much which road you take, as how you take it.”