Many people expect ""rewards"" in the form of making a living, having a stable salary, maybe supporting a family. Why would someone reward a personal choice in dedication? Usually because it's useful to them, economically.

I had a much more utopian and somewhat deluded outlook growing up. It was based on the things adults told me, e.g. at school, in the boy scouts, and elsewhere, or absorbed from fiction with a utopian outlook like Star Trek TNG. I think there's an impulse to shelter kids and instill hope in them which can foster a blindness to the dog-eat-dog ugliness of the world.

Act with morals, work hard, self-improve, and everything will work out!

I'm not the least or most successful of my peers, but I am sympathetic to bitterness and pretty bitter myself that people aren't better, that banal evil and selfishness and deceit are so omnipresent.

A reward does not need to come from “someone”, and usually doesn’t.

You should expect reward from dedication because you’ll get it. Not from some god on high or some random person called Tyler Smith. It’s from yourself or the fruits of your labor.