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Reader question: When they say so-and-so's “hard yards go unrewarded”, what does it mean? My comments: We're talking about an unlucky so-and-so here, aren't we? Unlucky because this someone works hard, putting in the hours, making every necessary effort, giving their all etc and so forth, but comes up empty handed. They have made the effort and yet have nothing to show for it. They simply failed, unable to get due recognition and/or monetary reward. That happens. I mean, if everyone's good honest effort is duly rewarded, as it should be, then we'd all be singing, as Louis Armstrong does: “What a wonderful world!” We'd all be singing, as does Satchmo, “I'm a lucky so-and-so.” Indeed, we'd be talking about a lucky so-and-so instead of an unfortunate one. Seriously, though, if we were less narrow-minded than we are, we'd probably be able to see perhaps our unlucky so-and-so is not so unlucky after all. I mean, what goes round comes round, one's effort will never go entirely unrewarded. If we're narrow minded and short sighted, we perhaps see with quite a degree of certainty that our efforts are not rewarded in terms of money and fame, not as much as we want at any rate, but we must be or must have been rewarded in some other ways, less noticeable ways. Take a marathon runner, for example. They do their training and run competitions year in and year out, but some of them never get anywhere in terms winning. They never win trophies and large checks. In this sense, they're failures. Their hard yards really do seem to go unrewarded. | 
