Youth's Collossal Failure: Ignoring Opportunities

It's 3 a.m. and a red car pulls up at the 24-hour convenience store. Two young guys get out. Each is decked out in expensive "hip-hop" style fashion.

These kids could be white, they could be black, they could be Latino. But all have commonalities that increasingly dominate the youth culture, but hinder their progress toward adult excellence.

Now it was mentioned that the clothes they are wearing are expensive. But they are also quite purposely unattractive. Hooded shirts, baggy pants, purposely discolored to make them look like street people, crooked baseball caps that dumb them down and belie their true intellect, shoes that are attractive in name (and price) only.

The whole package is lame. Who would hire these guys for a job of any kind? Who would even interview them?

Turns out that mom and dad buy their clothes for them, provide them with the red car and the insurance it takes, not to mention a reliable shelter and source for food and perhaps even some meaningful family relationships (which they are likely not pursuing at 3 a.m.). And of course, they run up cell phone bills that rival mortgage payments.

They don't realize it now, but they are missing out on opportunities, opportunities that might never be made available again. In fact, they are doing everything they can to let everyone around them know that they are at odds with those who might offer such opportunities.

Instead, they gravitate toward "fast cash" philosophies. Cash that takes little effort and magically appears in their wallets. They are glued to cell phones engaged in largely meaningless chat that often leads to friction and sometimes open conflict, further wasting their creative energies. They choose to emulate gangsters, pimps, mavericks, social malcontents, in-your-face hoodlums. Now they're actually decent people, they just don't dare be caught acting like it.

And they want to be sure to be seen at 3 a.m. so they "fit in" with the rest of their gangster suburbanites.

Remember: When you try and satisfy all your desires quickly, when you absorb everything culturally that might be "cool" at present, it doesn't necessarily translate into a positive future. And the older generation will carry you only so far.

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