I recently read a blog from someone I know that piqued my interest. If you don't know him by now, check out Jeremy's blog here. Once you've read it, come on back...
Done? Good.
Noble words, eh? But tender words don't put a roof over heads or food in mouths. As Rachel Dawes told Bruce Wayne, "It's not who we are underneath, but what we do that defines us." You can love all you want, but eventually, your wife and son will wonder why, if you loved them so much, you didn't do more to better your own life and, in turn, theirs.
Degrees aren't necessarily the doors to guaranteed success, but ambition is. If a person lacks this fundamental quality, they won't get a good job\career doing anything worthwhile or valuable, degree or not.
Much like the adage, "if a job was fun, they wouldn't have to pay you to do it," the same rings true for life in general. We get out of it whatever we put into it. Up until now, I had very little formal education. I still am three ball hairs away from my Bachelor's degree. My EMT certification ran out years ago and I never got another license beyond a CNA. This basically means that on paper, I'm not qualified to do anything.
Yet I've never been unemployed, every job has increased my pay (no lateral shifts), and I've gotten all of the jobs that I actually wanted & applied for. This is strictly the fruits of drive & ambition. These take you far in life such as buying nicer cars, houses, and things for your kid.
I agree that there are things more important than money, but don't use that as a crutch for apathy. You don't want to end up a broken man with a kid & family who loves you very much and you have to live with the fact that you could've done more for them but were too lazy and self-loathing to do so. Answering Jeopardy questions correctly or being a former professor at Cornell doesn't matter if you don't do anything with that knowledge\skill set to improve your station in life. Tits on a boar.
Another thing that Americans are very talented at is resignation; life is too hard, school sucks, bosses are idiots, so I'm just going to squeak by with whatever I can without working a little bit harder. I'm going to wait for a handout rather than put these idle hands to work. I challenge all readers on this topic; if you aren't worth shit, it is only because you have devalued yourselves.
Nothing worth doing is easy and nothing easy is worth doing. I'd love to play video games all day too, but I have school, work, blah, blah, blah. What keeps me going is that I know my time is coming up very soon where I can ease up on the reigns a bit and enjoy life. I have busted my ass to get where I am and can now save for my kid's college, get my wife nicer car so that she is less likely to kill us all in her shitty car, and have not had to rely on others to get through financially.
I know that putting my feet on the ground and grinding away at these stupid open mics will only help me as I pursue whatever it is I'm pursuing in comedy. If not, then I will at least know that I exhausted every possible avenue for success and can live with myself.
If a person wants to pursue a career, applies at a community college, and gets told "sorry, you have to do A, B, C before you can apply," and they just shrug and say, "Oh, well. I tried..." then they're just lying to themselves. You didn't try anything, asshole. You gave up quicker than the French and will go on to blame the world for your weakness.
Especially as Americans, we have the opportunities to do anything we want, more than any other country in the world, yet we have such a "woe is me," apathetic position as a culture. This boggles my goddamn mind.
Despite the Beatles, love is not, in fact, all you need. You need to move your ass or you'll eventually find a boot in it as others roll over you. This isn't complicated and you can apply the following paragraph to literally every aspect of your life: your body, education, family, career...
You can pretty much generalize Americans into two categories; those who do and those who do not. Those who do strive, fight, work, and resist the temptations of atrophy to further themselves. Those who do not are the opposite; they wait, avoid, and skirt by without making a ripple in life. They are also the ones preyed upon by those who do.
The line is already in the sand. It has always been there.
