Hope and Optimism, Undervalued Resources!
I read a tweet once that said something like, "What is being sold to you as recipe for success: hard work, perseverance, education. The REAL recipe for success: rich parents, connections, good looks, and good luck."
When I first saw this post, I got so annoyed I almost threw my phone (I didn't -- I’m not stupid -- my phone costs like a thousand dollars. But I wanted to.).
I get what the author of the tweet is trying to do. They are trying to acknowledge the meritocracy propaganda built into our society that blames you for your own misfortunes while applauding the successes of people who didn't face the same hardships you did. I applaud the author for that. My concern is that some people might take the tweet as permission to adapt the attitude of, "why try?”
The thousands of retweets could easily be taken as a sign of universal agreement that you may as well stop trying.
There is an implication that you are just wasting your time with hard work, perseverance, and education. After all, you have lots of negative situations in your life that you have no control over. You don't have a rich family. You don't have connections. You don’t have good looks, or good luck.
Look, I've been there. I was raised by my grandma in government housing. I wasn't allowed to live there. I spent most of my young life in hiding. I ate blocks of government cheese for breakfast, lunch and dinner. After high school, I couldn’t go to college because I was undocumented. And because I wasn’t a citizen, I could not get a job. So, I became a Craigslist hooker. That's right. An entrepreneur at age 18 and a damn good one! Seriously though, I was desperate. There isn't anything wrong with sex work but it wasn’t my first choice of vocation. However, to be forced into early retirement at age 19 due to an HIV diagnosis also wasn't ideal.
I know what it's like to not have hope.
At that time, the ONLY thing I had that kept me going were my dreams of one day living the life that I wanted. Making money, getting out of poverty, all of that. Hard work and perseverance don't guarantee success but it's impossible to find success without them. If I read that tweet at 19 years old while facing my life’s challenges, something that seemed insignificant might have taken away the only things I had at the time: my hope, my optimism, my sense of empowerment.
The key is not to rid the world of messages that may negatively impact your well-being but to understand that your success and joy starts with your sense of empowerment. Protect your sense of empowerment and build on it. I, and many others are here to help you do just that!
The first thing that you can do to start your journey of empowerment is to try to give yourself the advantage of happiness by examining some of the posts here on this site!
