Opinion

I just want to be successful

What would it take to make you feel like you were a success? How much money would you need before you felt like you had ‘made it’? How famous would you need to be? How many cars would you need to own? 

I believe it is all a matter of perspective, goals, and determination. Some people would define success as graduating college and landing that dream job. Others would say it’s signing that million dollar recording or athletic contract. Webster dictionary defines successful as having the correct or desired result: ending in success, or having gotten or achieved wealth, respect, or fame.

I believe success is self-actualization: discovering why you are here, who God made you to be and then actually becoming that.

I feel that in the black community however, there is a lack of self-actualization. Many young black kids only know success to be what they see on TV, look up on the internet or hear on the radio. They spend so much time trying to apply another’s success to their life that they never fully realize who they are. They learn at a young age that money is everything and that instead of finding out who they are.  what they love, and what they want to become, Black kids are taught to go after money.  I refuse to believe that Martin Luther King Jr. was a failure just because he didn’t have a million dollar bank account and the latest pair of Jordans.

Live your own life, discover God and yourself, and define success by your own terms.

Don’t let society tell you that just because you are black you have to fit into a cookie cutter mold of what a successful black person looks like.

Don’t be the person who looks up ten years from now and realizes that even though you have the wealth and the material possessions, you don’t have happiness and you don’t have true success because you followed a path that others cut out for you.

I was once the person who said “I’ll see you at the top.” Then I asked myself what is the top? The top of something is as high as it goes. Go higher and don’t put limits on being you and doing what you love. That’s true success.