Once You Stop Learning, You Start Dying

This is a follow up to the article, "A Penny Saved is a Government Oversight".



One reader questioned if I thought that people chose to be poor. I took some extra time to think about this while I was traveling over the week. A good car ride allows my thoughts to ferment to fruition.



I arrived at the following conclusion: Not everyone chooses to live in poverty. This, albeit simple, conclusion is the product of knowing there are disadvantaged individuals from birth and will never prosper by the American standard of "success". But it's this definition of "disadvantaged" that will prove to be the line in the sand.



When I think of someone who is disadvantaged and lives in poverty, I think of those who are unable to gain employment and independently sustain living. Most often these individuals are disabled, whether from birth or by accident. My definition of the disadvantaged are the people who are disadvantaged through no fault of their own and have subsequently suffered economically as a result of that disadvantage.



In contrast, there are individuals who are poor yet lack any physical disadvantages discussed above. If you were to compare the individuals without a physical disadvantage (both poor and rich), I believe you would find that the main difference between these groups is not the amount of income they have, but the choices they made that led them to where they are now.



Every day we are faced with a plethora of choices. Some small, some monumentally life changing. Sometimes we make bad decisions, but hopefully we make good decisions most of the time. But making too many bad decisions can lead to our undoing.



It is my belief that regardless of our socio-economic status at birth, we can all achieve success. That is the essence behind the American dream; it is the appeal that has made America the leading nation in immigration. Our forefathers came to America because America is the land of opportunity; the place where a person can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps to achieve success. To sum up; anyone can succeed, but success is determined by hard work and the decisions we make everyday.



Inherently, those who have succeeded make it easier to pass that success onto their offspring. Those who come from families where success has not been established will find it harder, but it is still possible to achieve.



Now I can fluff on this column from here on out and tell you that success is measured by your own personal drive and say other feel good things that will excite you for a total of 5 minutes. But I won't do that. I won't act like those "get-rich-quick" schemes on late night television. The truth I want to give all the readers is that every decision you make affects where you will be for the rest of your life.



We can choose premarital sex when we're young, and increase your chances of a pregnancy. Having an additional mouth to feed makes it more difficult to achieve successl; if you don't have very supportive parents you have to take whatever job you can get to put food on the table.



We can choose drugs that can ultimately lead to deadly consequences or the missed opportunity at a good career. It's hard to think straight if you're brain is fried from severe drug use. It's hard to land a good job if you have a criminal record.



We can choose to look for a job where we currently live or we can uproot and locate someplace where there are good jobs. It's hard to get a good job in Bell County when there are none and it's hard to uproot and leave friends and family behind. Sometime's it's necessary though to succeed. I feel bad when I see someone working a dead end job, especially when it's the only job they can get in Bell County. But that may be the key; it's the only job they can get in Bell County, not elsewhere. To use an old expression; "It's easier to bring Muhammed to the Mountain than the Mountain to Muhammed".



But the biggest factor in determining one's success is education. Hands down. We can choose to slide by in our education. We can choose to accept a C or a D as acceptable and do just enough to ensure we graduate from high school and never go any farther. It's extremely hard to get a job in today's economy without a higher education and this is the primary reason college enrollment has dramatically increased during the recession. The better the education you have, the more irreplacable you are in the workforce. The education we receive/have will directly influence our income and subsequently, our success.



We've heard this from guidance counselors, teachers, and if we're lucky enough, our parent(s). I was lucky enough to have a father and a mother that pushed me to excel in the classroom and always reminded me that my success was linked to my academics.

I understand there are people who just naturally understand course material in school and there are others that don't. But if I didn't understand the material at first, I took the extra time to learn it. I had to spend a lot of extra time on Chemistry, World Civilizations, and History but I was still successful in those courses.

If we choose to do the work, we learn the material. When we learn the material, we do better on exams. When we do better on exams, we make better overall grades. When we make better overall grades, we increase our chances of being accepted to a good university. When we get graduate from a good university, we increase our chances of getting a good paying job. Today anyone can attend college if you have the necessary grades. There are numerous financing options available. Scholarships may be decreasing in supply (Pell Grants, KEES money), but anyone can get a student loan and the return on investment from that student loan is priceless.



I think part of the problem today is the devaluation of education. This devaluation existed when I was in school and exists still today. Those who were considered "smarter" were teased by classmates, thereby helping to ingrain the idea that education is undesirable. As an example, African American males tease each other for academic accomplishments and in order to win favor with their peers, will intentionally stop learning material. At some point, these individuals hit a point of no return as they are too far gone to catch up.



So our choices directly impact the success that we have in our lives. To say otherwise is ignorance. People do not consciously wake up one morning and say to themselves, "I think I want to be poor for the rest of my life". I never suggested that. But poor decisions yield poor results. So be it as it may, the best path to success is to make the best decisions possible to secure your future success; but start first with your education. Outside of that, those daily decisions are up to you.