This photo shows two young adults seated in a coffee shop. I watched them for a half-hour ignore each other hiding behind their face masks, hoodies, and cell phones. As a therapist, I wondered about how this generation is learning to develop relationships? How successful will they be and how is society hindering their ability to be successful?
It takes hard work to succeed in life. All facets of living require effort. If you want success you must learn how to be successful. If you want good relationships, you must learn to relate to others. If you want knowledge, you must seek it. If you want material things, you must earn the means to purchase them. The successful person is the one who is willing to do whatever it takes to earn a living, work their way to the top, and acquire the knowledge and training necessary to stay there.
Success does not happen when someone makes demands of another and simultaneously limits their ability to meet those demands by preventing them from succeeding. Critical Race Theory doesn’t make sense to me because you can’t genetically inherit victimization or guilt. Skin pigmentation may be inherited, but Genetic Testing has revealed so much more about our nation's multi-ethnicity. America has always been known as the "melting pot" of the world and our strength has been in our people's diversity. The variety of the populous is what makes our nation unique. To remove this truth in order to focus on skin color alone is like trying to undo the genetic markers that make each of us unique. When someone is bi- tri- or multiracial, how do we force them into a race category simply based on the pigmentation of their skin? And how can we say that skin pigmentation determines the success of someone where there is so much proof to the contrary? I wish we would stop talking about skin color as the reason why some are more or less successful and start focusing on what truly makes someone successful in the first place. Let's focus on teaching our youth how to be successful in life and encourage ways to help build them up instead of tearing them down.
You can't make one person successful
by making others unsuccessful.