In today’s society we are living “of” the world instead of just merely living in it, as my great-grandmother would say. We as people are getting sucked into the lifestyles that other people portray as a “good life” on these reality television shows that we tune into weekly.
But that type of life styling will only be successful and glamorous for a little while. What they fail to tell you is that you have to live a disciplined life to have the things you see on television.
People fantasize over having material things such as fancy cars, woman, money, big houses, sex and drugs. Like gaining a degree and putting faith and hard work behind it is just not the way to go about life. This generation is so used to having things easy, working is hard. That’s why having a rapping career may seem easy to some, and they want the lifestyle so bad until they soon find out that to become successful in this is harder than they would like to believe.
Everyone yearns to be successful quickly, even if that means taking the four years to start up a rap career while supposedly completing a degree in business or a more popular major (criminal justice). But some college rappers are going about their career in rapping from a business perspective by using their degree to understand and gain knowledge of the business, while some people just look at the glamour and use that part as their motivation. People want the gold before the struggle, and that’s just not how that works.
Since becoming a rapper seems like a faster route to being at the point of success that we’ve brainwashed ourselves to believe, we act upon it. Hard work isn’t known to this newer generation. It seems that everyone is looking for a handout, which is the last thing you should want. What if what someone is handing out is of the world and not for it?
Success is more than fancy clothes and cars; it’s being at a point in your life where you are at peace!
Lacey Mayo is a senior mass communication major from New Orleans.