My point, which you missed, is not that you can't ask why, but that you aren't obligated to ask why. Saying that you made a choice (repeatedly) to work hard is enough of an answer to the question of why you had some benefit in your life accrue to you due to your hard work. If you want to ask why you made those choices, you would have to give an answer for each one, but the fact is that you made them.

Free will is no more an illusion than the qualia of red. If what you think is outside your control, then who is the "you" that is not in control? Where is it?