You Tell Me You Want It?

a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen. “a desire to work in the dirt with your bare hands”

desire

It’s Tuesday again, and you know what that means… today is Truth Be Told Tuesday. Thanks for checking in.

I’m glad to be back! As my two readers have noticed I decided to take a small break from my “Truth Be Told Tuesday” forum for three reasons:

I didn’t make time to write because I needed a break.
I didn’t make time to write because my two readers needed a break.
For the first time I realized I didn’t have anything important to say. I know… I was shocked too.

But now I’m back, so let’s go.

On May 17^th I read an interesting article in the New York Times entitled; “Class, Cost & College.” The piece by Frank Bruni outlined the struggle it is to obtain a quality college education if you’re poor in the United States.

My comments on Facebook, as I shared this Times Op-Ed piece, acknowledged my belief every parent should read this article if they had a child in, about to enter, or has graduated from college. I wasn’t completely sure how I felt about the article, but I did believe the piece had merit and provided a candid view on how secondary education in our country today is often an opportunity that is overwhelmingly afforded to the wealthy citizens in our society.

A college education is increasingly becoming a costly privilege for the privileged.

Muhammad Ali: Training | Miami 1960

As I continued to read the article I asked myself if the cost of a college education in our country was unwarranted and inappropriate, or was the cost just a reflection of a capitalistic society- a society that I’m completely in favor of by the way?

Was this part of doing business in the academic world or was it just plain unfair? Life is unfair, right?

In every society there will be the have and “have nots.” You can’t legislate economic class, economic power, or opportunity based upon finances because you can’t legislate a person’s free will to decide to do what they want to do- bad decisions have ruined more dreams and more household finances than discrimination, class welfare, and sexism combined.

Another question: Do you need to be rich to get ahead and to attend the best universities our country has to offer?

I don’t know, but statistics would say yes. Maybe privileged people will always find other privileged people, and poor people will always find other poor people to interact with and move up/down the financial and social ladder?

I’m not really sure what I’m trying to say other than if you want something bad enough you will go get no matter if you’re rich or poor, black, Latino or white.

Show me how bad someone wants something and I’ll show you their potential in getting that something.

Life is very difficult.

It is a perquisite that we all work hard to get what we want and if you don’t get what you want considered yourself blessed you had the opportunity to work your butt off and fail, so you can use that life lesson the next time challenge, want & desire, and opportunity comes knocking on your door.

Life is not fair. Life is very difficult.

Some people are rich and some people are poor. Figure it out for yourself and let not one obstacle, no matter the size, stand in your way of getting what you want out of life.

What do you want? How bad do you want it?

Finally, this past Sunday my boy’s 8-9 year old basketball team played in the championship game against a team that had two losses, one being to our team, the Warriors, earlier in the season. As fate, karma, poor play or plain destiny would have it we lost by 5 points. The team and the parents took it hard as I saw some of the players shedding tears as we shook hands with the opposing team. I thought to myself this is great. This thing called basketball and being competitive is important to these kids.

My boys, Ryan and Addison, took it especially hard as they had tears rolling down their cheeks during the awards ceremony and in the car on our way to Dairy Queen after the game.

I told the boys that it’s difficult to beat a good team twice and that any chances you get to play in a championship game in the future you have to play your best and play with a strong sense of urgency.

Later that evening, while I was driving home picking up a pizza- Sunday is pizza night in the Bailey household- my two boys were playing one on one in the driveway.

They were getting after it.

Splash Brothers | Do you want this? Because we do!

The next morning as I was leaving for work they were in the driveway playing one on one again.

Once again, they were getting after it.

What I realized as I drove away with a tear in my eye is that they want it. There will be nothing that will stand in their way of wanting to get better. They have already decided that no defeat or pain is big enough to deter them from their goal of being as good as they can be in the game of basketball.

Are they going to be great in hoops? I have no idea. Can you really compare poverty and access to a college education to little league championship basketball game? Yes and no.

Poverty is toughest disease to beat in our country because most of the time your inflicted with this sickness at birth and it clings to you like a wet blanket until the day you die.

Being poor is a miserable existence.

But the parallel between the two is that we all have a choice after defeat or victory. I believe life is about what we do after we find ourselves in the valley or on the mountaintop. It’s about how we run the race; do we run to participate or to win? Only you can answer that question for yourself. Remember, some people choose not to the run the race at all.