This year has been one of the roughest years of my young adult
life, and that is something as I have had many tough ones. I
truly would like to blame it on someone else, but, in earnest,
the only one who I look to is myself. I have been given
everything, and, for the most part, blown it all; but, hey, you
live and learn. In the past, it was always okay, because I could
pick up the pieces rather quickly, but this time it has been very
different.
For some reason, what once came easy wasn’t anymore, and the
struggle became too much. I had to give up a lot, or a better way
of saying it is: “much was taken away.” I was angry for a while,
and quite depressed, as no eleventh hour miracle came knocking on
my door. But a funny thing started to happen. What started out as
anger had turned into acceptance, and that very acceptance,
itself, turned into joy and ease.
I started to really enjoy the things that I think we are actually
supposed to enjoy. I started to meet people who I never thought I
would or wanted to meet. My world that had become so small was
starting to become so huge. I wanted a bailout, but wouldn’t that
put me in the same situation I was in before? I wanted the tax
check in the mail that never seemed to be coming, even though,
every day, I looked. I wanted what was yours to become mine
because, hell, it seemed so much easier than trying to get my
own. I wanted you to say, “You poor sap, I am sorry here you go.”
But that did not happen, and I am so grateful that it did
not.
I was forced to grow up and mature in ways that I really didn’t
know that I could, or ever wanted to. I always wanted to be a
Toys-R-Us kid. I get it, I do, and a lot of people out there are
struggling as I am. But, I don’t want yours anymore because I am
confident that I can make it on my own; and when I do, I would
truly like to keep it this time. We have become a nation of
addicts and Obama is promising to be the new dealer with the fix
that we have come to need. All good dealers don’t want their
addicts to get clean and then cut the dealer out of the picture.
It is time for my generation to get sober, and realize it no
longer needs the quick fix.
There is no better feeling than earning an honest day’s wage for
an honest day’s work. Sadly that isn’t the nature of many of us
anymore. I have grown up in a period where everything was taken
care of for us, and, unfortunately that has created a generation
of pansies, myself included. If anyone should want Obama to win
it’s me, because he is promising to give me something of yours,
no questions asked. Hey, what is better than free money? If
anybody should want what he promises it is I, and my generation.
Why not, we have been taken care of very well, and really haven’t
had to grow up much.
But I want to grow up and feel what it is like to be a man. I
want to experience how my grandfather struggled to make it better
for my father, and how my father struggled to make it better for
me. I want to know what it is like to earn, and I want to know
what it is like to save. I want to be helped up when I fall, but
no longer do I want to be picked up. Struggle is the only thing
that forces us to grow. If you take that out of the equation, you
are left with what you have right now, a nation unprepared for
the struggle. So, of course, someone who makes you a promise that
he will feed you a fish, and not teach you how to fish, sounds
good. But, I assure you, when you learn how to fish, the fish
will taste so much better.
