Question

Once, a wagon driver arrived in Nikolsburg after a terrible journey on a dark, freezing night. He looked for a place to warm up and eat something, and came to the only house with lights on—the home of the holy gaon, Rabbi Shmelke—where he was warmly received, with a hot drink, a meal, and a place to sleep. When he saw Rabbi Shmelke return to his studies, his spirits fell—the rabbi was delighting in his learning, comfortably, joyfully, and pleasantly in a warm, heated house, while he had nearly died on the road trying to bring home a bit of livelihood.
After a brief reflection, he strengthened himself and said to Rabbi Shmelke that surely all the suffering he was going through would earn him a respectable portion in the World to Come. But Rabbi Shmelke replied to him: And if this world, for which you labor and toil so hard with self-sacrifice to get something from it, and still you do not succeed in getting anything—then the World to Come, for which you make no effort at all, how will you get it?