I’ve always had a complicated relationship with the word struggle. Real struggle is grinding away at something with no guarantees, scraping by when the payoff is uncertain, and getting judged for it along the way. What pisses me off is when people who’ve never had to deal with any of that toss the word around casually, as if late-night gaming in their childhood bedroom counts as hardship.
I know guys who lived at home well into their thirties, with mom still folding laundry and making sandwiches. Their biggest struggle was deciding what kind of jam to put on toast or deciding where to get their oil changed. When they finally moved out, it wasn’t because they were financially independent. It was because they got married, and their wife stepped into the role their mother had always filled. That’s not independence – that’s just trading caretakers. And if they were doing well financially, it’s because they paid only a modicum of rent while living at home, and meals were free – they had never gone grocery shopping in their life.
What really stings is how differently people view those who actually do step out and take risks. In 2000, after a downsizing, I returned to school through a government program designed to help individuals upgrade their skills. The deal was simple: they paid a modest income for the year, and the course fees, but I couldn’t take a side job or I’d lose the funding. So I stuck to the rules. And yet the rumors started: “He has afternoons off, he could be working.” Lazy. Unmotivated. Taking advantage. None of it is true. I spent afternoons doing homework online.
Later, when I was building my freelance business in the early 2000s, it was the same thing. Long days of pitching, writing, barely scraping by – and the whispers came back: “He should just get a real job.” It’s funny how people respected my ex-father-in-law when he built his electrical contracting business from scratch after being downsized, struggling through lean years with his wife and three young kids at home. That was noble. That was grit. But when I went through lean years doing the same with my now ex-wife and one (step)son? Lazy. Doesn’t want to work. A loser.
Then, of course, when I landed the PGA Tour Americas job, along with its affiliates, numerous major magazine features on contract, and later Christie, suddenly I had “cool jobs.” The very people who dismissed and disparaged me before suddenly wanted a piece of it – some corporate swag, free tickets to a golf tournament, deeply discounted green fees, or golf paraphernalia. And I’ll be honest: part of me wanted to tell them all to screw off.
That’s the thing – no one sees the grind. No one sees the sweat, the rejection, the late nights at the desk when you’re not sure how you’ll pay the bills next month. They only see the highlight reel, not the bloopers.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but people seem to forget that Rome wasn’t built in silence, either. There were years of scaffolding, labor, and setbacks. The same goes for business – whether it’s Ray Kroc finding McDonald’s in his fifties, Dave Thomas flipping burgers before Wendy’s, or Colonel Sanders hauling his chicken recipe around and getting rejected a thousand times. Everyone celebrates the billion-dollar outcome, but no one wants to watch the part where you’re living in a cramped apartment, doubting yourself, and wondering if you’ll ever catch a break.
That’s the invisible grind. And if you’ve never lived it, you don’t get to talk down to those who have.
There’s nothing wrong with stability. If you lived at home into adulthood, that’s your story. If your wife became “mom 2.0,” that’s your story. If you never moved more than a few blocks from where your parents still live and the familial tit to one extent or another, fine. But don’t call it a struggle. And don’t diminish people who’ve taken the harder road, because you’ve never walked it.
The difference is simple: some people live without a safety net. Some don’t. Only one of those groups knows what it feels like to struggle. Truly struggle.
Maybe I shouldn’t care what the “baby bottle of home” crowd thinks. But I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t still nag at me sometimes. Judgment has a way of sticking, especially when it’s unfair. What I’ve come to realize, though, is that respect doesn’t come from them – it comes from the grind itself. From getting up, showing up, and pushing forward anyway. From knowing that the work I’m doing now – researching, writing, editing, delivering – is mine. Built by me, not handed to me.
In the end, maybe that’s the point. Struggle isn’t about appearances. It isn’t about rumors. It isn’t about who cheers you on. It’s about the unglamorous middle – the scaffolding years no one wants to look at or thinks about.
That’s where the truth is and where respect should live.
John Berkovich Talks 