The Land of Opportunity

By Danielle Martin

I live in America which is commonly referred to as the land of the free and the home of the brave. One only has to look at the battles being fought in the Middle East to realize that though our country may not be perfect, at least the majority of us can go to sleep at night with the assurance that we will most likely wake again.

While watching the news we are constantly bombarded with stories of tragedies happening all across the world. Images of malnourished babies with bloated tummies are practically required to be shown at least daily on CNN. Many of these children are dead long before we can even think to consider picking up the phone and dialing the numbers shown at the bottom of the screen. Many times I stare at the images and feel a multitude of emotions. Sadness, guilt, and pity are among the most common.

When my mother tells me how lucky I am to have been born in the U.S, the land of opportunity, I find it hard not to roll my eyes and cringe. Though she may mean well, it’s hard for me to feel lucky when I’ve known nothing else but this life that I live. Perhaps, if I wanted to, I could blame my lack of gratitude on pop culture. With shows like MTV’s Cribs or VH1’s The Fabulous Life Of, it’s hard to swallow the idea that people in other countries just aren’t as fortunate as my friends and I.

If an athlete can gain millions upon millions of dollars for kicking a ball around for a couple of hours or a poor kid from the Brooklyn projects can grow up to be a million dollar rapper/entrepreneur then why can’t the majority of people living in Somalia afford to have clean running water. According to Wikipedia, a statistic from 2000 indicated that only 21 of the population had access to safe drinking water at that time. More than half that country was drinking contaminated water and most likely they did so completely unaware. And even if they were aware they probably still drank the water. Better to die of contamination than of thirst.

From what I’ve been told and can only imagine outsiders view America in many different ways. The top 2 being A) A rich country filled with opportunity or B) They view us as being a lazy and yet arrogant country with no respect for anyone other than ourselves. We have many admirers and just as many enemies and with our history it’s not hard to see why we have both.

Like my mother said, being born in America is like having drawn the lucky straw. From the moment we draw breath we’ve been told that the world is ours to conquer. We can be anyone and do anything. Education is mandatory here where as in a lot of other places it is barely optional. So why is it that in a country so filled with opportunity many of us are falling through the cracks?

My theory is that many of us simply lack the necessary drive to take us to where we want to be in life. Having talent, goals, and dreams are only half the battle. What we really need is to take the initiative. Many American children and teenagers myself included grow up with a silver spoon in their mouths. Ask and you shall receive. We are born secure in the knowledge that our parents will provide for us and keep us safe from harm. Whether that remains to be true or not is a whole different topic.

Our parents’ generation had a multitude of issues to fight for: racial equality and women’s rights being prime examples. They paved the way for our lives to just be plain better. And yet here we are squandering all that they worked so hard for.

Though it may seem like I am trying to place blame, please believe me when I say that is not my intention. My goal for writing this essay was just to inform. So many times I hear family and friends complaining “The reason why we don’t have any jobs is all those foreigners are coming over here and taking all the good ones” and I just disagree. Though it may be true that people from other countries do come to America for opportunities that just aren’t available in their country they aren’t doing it as a personal attack on you. If you really wanted that job then you would get off your butt and work hard to earn it.

I’m lucky to have been exposed to people my age from many different cultures. One of my best friends, Hank, is Taiwanese. His parents sent him here to live with family members so that he may better himself and gain the education that many of us take for granted.

No one wants to be told that their dreams won’t come true and that’s not what I’m trying to say. As Americans, we are put upon pedestals. In countries all across the world, our lives are shown by Hollywood to be seemingly ideal. And although we know this to be untrue, we have poverty, and crime, and people do go hungry, we can still count ourselves among the lucky ones. Most of us will never know what it’s like to go to sleep in fear that we won’t be there in the morning. Most of us will never lay our heads down on a pillow and be terrified that a bomb will hit our house and we will just cease to exist. And that worst of all no one would notice.

"That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only which gives everything its value."

Thomas Paine

Have a great day