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I grew up not having a whole lot from a financial perspective. My dad was not around by 1-2 yrs old where I don’t remember him being around ever. But, my amazing Mom was always there. So, from the viewpoint of some in this world, my sister and I should have been “helpless”...
Now, there are always families/situations that are worse off than you, and we were by no means, destitute, but the poorest of the poor in the US are still better off than a lot of people in the rest of the world. But, my Mom didn’t give up. She instilled respect, discipline,...
... and the value of hard work, and the value of education, and the lesson that life isn’t and will never be fair all of the time into us at a very young age. And, probably the most important thing is that she taught us that we could do/become anything we wanted...
...in this great country of ours if we were willing to sacrifice today, for better things tomorrow, and if we were willing to work our asses off for those better things tomorrow. She wouldn’t let us take the “woe is me” attitude. She would not let us fail.
So, that’s what we did, we focused on education, focused on hard work, got good grades in high school, so that we could get as many scholarships as we could for college. What that wouldn’t pay for, my Mom worked two jobs to close the gap, and then the rest was student loans.
We worked our asses off in college to get where we wanted to be. My sister is an Attorney, and I am a CPA. But, if we go back to the beginning, born in a west Texas oil town, neither parent having a college education, dad bolting early on, it would have been so easy to throw...
...our hands up and give up. To say “there’s nothing we can do to better our situation.” And, had I been taught at a young age that I was disadvantaged, and that I had all these impossible odds to overcome, I probably would have believed that.
So, when I hear that parents have to tell their kids that because of the color of their skin, or the situation they were born into, that there is no hope, that there is no way out, I lose my mind a little bit.
And when I see the youth of America on the streets rioting and protesting about “Revolution”, and “end the US”, when most of them grew up in affluent households, in the most affluent era the world has ever seen, I lose my mind a lot.
We must teach the youth of America that nothing is given to you for free, nothing is owed to you for being born, and the path to a better life is through respect of others, discipline, hard work, and the knowledge that life is not always fair.
But, that the opportunity is always there if you want to grab it, if you want to sacrifice what it takes to get there. But, I see more people today that don’t want to grab it. They want to be handed something. They want to feel helpless, or they were taught to be helpless.
We must turn this trend around. We can’t give kids trophies for everything. They must learn at an early age about losing. They must learn at an early age that they can persevere through perceived or real inequities.
“There should be equality in opportunity, but no guarantee of equality in outcomes, due to inequality of effort” - @joerogan and @McConaughey on the JRE
