Merit Isn't Just For The Winners

Merit is a quality that we seek to achieve and have acknowledged. But what is it? To be meritorious is to be deserving of praise. It has been defined as the opinion one man entertains of another. Demerit on the other hand, most of us, seek to avoid. It being a path to infamy. The famous, in a classic and worthy context, are those with merit, or, more accurately, they deserve their fame. That is, that which made them famous has merit and is deserving of praise.

Hard work and skill focused on a specific goal, with the end result achieved, can be merit but it is not that simple. Effort alone does not achieve merit. Hard work, being successful at one's tasks, or being self made on their own is not merit. If merit were simply about getting to a goal, or working hard to achieve it, merit could apply to many things not deserving of praise.