THE AGE OF THE HUSTLE

I ask you all to close your eyes and envision that you are at Harvard university learning technology and a thought hits you about computers, now move years forward and you are at the same school but now think of a social networking website. Now we jump further back to a time of hate and torment and come up with an idea to bring a nation together. Open your eyes and I ask you where have all the thinkers gone? When I talk about thinkers I talk about those who solve problems and also bring new ideas to this world. This week I've seen somethings that made me question myself as well as the people in this society. On my commute every day from work these young men come onto the train and dance for money. Now apart of me thinks they do it because they love it or maybe there just practicing. But then the other half of me sees something completely different. That part of me sees young men that believe they have no other option but to do what they know or don't know to make money. Images of suppressed black men dancing for money during a time of inequality come to my head. I look around and people stare with eyes of these young men as being inferior. I fear this age of the hustle will create an unbalanced and different world. There was a time where kids sold candy for school fund raisers but now older men do it as if it is a living. The young and old sing for money even though they are out of tune. My eyes must be deceiving as I watch a grown man show his son how to sell bootleg dvd's and cd's. It makes me upset that when it comes down to the teaching to the youth and future of this world the essence of the hustle.

We all want to have a certain status in life that we can look back and enjoy our accomplishments. But to many of us look in that direction and believe it will come no matter what. We are the lovers of dreams but never want to wake up and pursue. As a society we are losing a basic principal which is working hard. I'm not saying standing on a train or street corner selling things or selling yourself isn't hard work. It is but for me personally I don't see it as hard work but as an easy dollar. We mimic the things that seem easy and popular. Creativity has been replaced with the need for wealth. You might say im old fashioned but from my examples above, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Martin Luther King did not do the things for there own personal gain. They did it to change the world, creating a new era through creativity and there determination. These two words mean nothing to most in todays society, ranging from the people in Hollywood to the common folk. I hope that this age of the hustle ends and hope that the day comes when the hustlers will become the thinkers. Its time to wake up!