 “You take somebody that has the right mindset, you take everything from them and put them on the street and I guarantee in a little while they’ll be right back up there...and you take somebody with the wrong mindset, you can give them everything in the world, they’ll work their way right back down to the bottom.
You know, that’s real poverty. If you don’t have that defeatist attitude, there’s hope for you. I think the majority of people don’t have that defeatist attitude, but they sometimes just don’t see the way and that’s where government can come in, and be very helpful. It can provide a ladder of opportunity, it can provide the mechanism that we demonstrate to them what can be done.” These are some of the comments by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson during a SiriusXM radio interview on Wednesday. And, of course, conspiracy theorists, Internet trolls, people on the far left, and the 3% of lazy ass citizens went to social media to bury him. One of the most difficult things anyone has to do, harder than public speaking, harder than facing a phobia of some kind, is looking in the mirror. Having an in-depth look into your own soul, admitting your own strengths and weaknesses, realizing that the person staring back at you in the mirror is largely in control of your life, is a very daunting task. As the world poses and postures for one another on the Internet, people develop extreme arrogance and “artificial confidence”. When something does not go their way, let’s say that promotion at work slipped through their fingers, or a financial hardship hit them at the worst time (although there is never really a good time to go through a financial hardship), people with “artificial confidence” arrogantly believe that the system is out to get them. “It can’t possibly be my fault that I am struggling like this!” The systematic oppression in America, regardless of color, past and present, is well-documented. That being the case, continuing to use that as an excuse for one’s lack of progress is weak and lazy. Success comes in many different forms and stem from an infinite number of roads. It would have been very easy for Fox Sports analyst Jason Whitlock to complain about how the system was made to keep people of color down. Instead, he worked, hustled, and made no excuses for himself. He now holds a very coveted position within the sports media space at a major network. The important concept to take from Whitlock’s story is the lack of laziness. On the treacherous, winding, sometimes joyous, other times heart-breaking road towards success, people or systems put in place by people will try to keep you down. Continuing to use poverty, “Big Brother” or any other excuse as to why we are not more successful is just plain...lazy. Photo from Getty Images
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