The title of this post is also a lyric from a song performed by REM. They were terribly offended that Donald Trump used it for one of his rallies. Perhaps they will also be pissed that I used it to title a post. Well, since I can’t play music on this post(probably could but I don’t have the talent to do it), I hope they won’t be too offended.
What does the title imply? Well it implies that the world, or at least our country, is turning into something unrecognizable to many people my age. My age is over 18 and less than 65–what employers are allowed to ask prospective employees. I’ll give you a hint, I remember hearing about Watergate on the radio. Interpret that as you may. Things that were taught to me ask a child and a young woman seem to have less importance to people. I get that things change and evolve over time under the influence of advances in technology, medicine, communication, etc. I am not worried about those changes. The changes that are frightening are the attitudes towards work, how we treat others and our own personal responsibility.
When I was growing up, I couldn’t wait to get a job and earn my ‘own money.’ My first job paid a whopping $1/hr and had no benefits. There were no mandated lunch breaks, no rules about who could be hired or fired, no taxes taken out, just a job for what I felt was a fortune. I worked hard all summer, sometimes 14 hours a day. Of course ‘work’ was sitting on the back of a horse and guiding people around wooded trails. I saved all the money I made and had enough to buy new clothes for school that fall. We grew up pretty poor. We never went without food, but it was a struggle for my mother to buy us new clothes every year. Buying my own clothes took a big load off her. I was proud of those clothes. I bought them at a discount store, but it didn’t matter. I bought them myself. This was to be the first time I experienced the jealousy of someone who didn’t work towards me. It was my own sister. She complained to my mother that I got more new school clothes than her. My mother explained that I paid for all of them. Didn’t matter, my sister felt that she should always get as much as I got or it ‘wasn’t fair.’
This is a common attitude nowadays. People have made choices that mean they cannot make the type of salary that some other people make. They perhaps feel trapped in a lower paying job. They complain about never being able to get ahead. They say if only they made more, things would be better. They say that it is criminal that people only get paid a certain amount for basically unskilled labor. What they don’t say is that they want the opportunity to learn more important or valuable skills to earn more. No, they just want more for the job they already do. They feel it’s ‘not fair’ that others earn so much and they earn so little. They complain that they cannot feed their families on such a low salary. They are jealous and bitter. They will not expend extra energy going out of their way to get new skills. They will spend a lot of time and energy complaining–which they call protesting. Time away from the children they are so desperate to support, time they could be working and making more money or learning new skills. However, they have time to protest.
Jealousy is poisonous. It doesn’t help anyone involved, least of all the ones that are jealous. These people have been convinced that somehow they have been wronged by being forced to work a low paying job. Nobody tells them that a low paying job, if done very well, can be a stepping stone to a better paying job. In order to grow beyond that job, they have to perhaps make sacrifices. Give up time that might be spent doing enjoyable things working more or learning new skills or going to school. It’s not easy. Just demanding more pay because they are having trouble making ends meet is not productive at all. What got them in a situation where the only job they can get is minimum wage when they have child? When I was younger, I made just as little on a proportional basis compared to someone in my position now. I didn’t sit around whining that I didn’t make as much money as my boss. I got up off my ass and went back to school, while I still worked. It took another 9 years of working at lower paying jobs, but now I have a higher paying job.
You also have to have a work ethic and take responsibility for your own life. If you only work the absolute minimum number of hours possible or put in the minimum amount of effort required at that job, do you really expect to rise to the top? Young people these days do. They have been coached to believe there should be no winners or losers, just participants. This is not reality. There are winners in life–they are the ones who find out what it takes to get what they want and then implement it. They also accept responsibility for what doesn’t go right. They don’t try to blame mishaps and setbacks on other people. Are some bad situations caused by other people? Absolutely. Can you overcome these occurrences in the country? Absolutely. To be successful you have to be just as good at failing as you are at succeeding. Admit the mistakes that caused your failures and don’t ever repeat them. Don’t whine about the mistakes and say that they were beyond your control. If you really examine your failures, you will find that usually are the main architect of your failure. Only once you admit this can you learn the important lessons from the misstep. You learn so much more from failures than you do from winning. I promise you that.
Is the world as we know it really over? I have to be hopeful. I do know a few young people who are on fire about what they do and are willing to do whatever is necessary to get where they are going. They don’t complain about being poor or tired or not having what everyone else has. They look at what they want. They determine what they need to get there. Then they go for it. They cannot help but succeed, even if they never reach their ultimate goal. The journey is half the battle. When you are busy working towards a lofty goal, you forget about what others have or don’t have. You just focus on what you need to do. That kind of attitude made this country great. The attitude that, in this country, anything is really possible for anyone. I still believe that, even now. I have to. For those young people who think income equality and socialism is a great idea, they need to understand that in 25 years they will be the ones supporting the young and dumb and they won’t like it any more than I do.