The Online Rant

I was listening to a CD by Fort Minor the other day. (If you haven’t heard their music, you should check it out. They’re pretty good.) The last track on the CD is called “Out the Back.” One particular phrase from the track really caught my attention.
It goes like this,

“Slip out the back before they knew you were there, and at the worst you’ll see nobody cares.”

The reason it caught my attention was that it really fits my first reaction to any situation where I’m afraid of other people’s reactions. Especially when that fear is of rejection. It somehow seems better to discover that no one cared that I wasn’t there, than to be rejected.
But is it really better? How many opportunities have I missed because I was afraid of being rejected? Friends, jobs, relationships, the list goes on and on. Why is rejection from a stranger or a passing acquaintance such a big deal for me? Is my self worth so low that a rejection from a person or group that I will probably never see again really going to destroy me?
Sure rejection hurts, but it really isn’t going to hurt me that much long term. Certainly no worse than the discovery that no one cared like the song said.

I’ve been really thinking about how fortunate I am. Actually everyone from the US is incredibly blessed. Sure, we have poor people and rich people. We have homeless people and we have people who are in bad shape financially. The difference is that even the worst of us are better off than people from most of the nations in this world.

In this country anyone who wants has a chance to become wealthy. If you make good decisions and work hard there is no reason not to expect you will someday retire with considerable wealth. Furthermore, anyone can be whatever they want to be. It doesn’t matter if you are rich or poor, or if you are born into a trade or not. If you want to become something, you can do it. There isn’t anything holding you back.

I’m not saying everyone makes it. And I’m not saying that coming from a wealthy family doesn’t help. All I’m saying is that we all have a chance and we know it.

What would it be like to grow up somewhere that that isn’t true? A place where if you are born poor, you have no hope of ever being anything but poor for the rest of your life. Where you can’t be anything you want. That’s what it’s like in most of the rest of the world.