Have you heard the old joke about the construction worker who arrives at the job site everyday, and has the same lunch? He complains to his fellow workers that he’s tired of eating the same old stuff.

I Did it Myself

The workers look at him and invariably one of them says, “Can’t you ask your wife to pack something else?” He looks back at them, kind of puzzled, and says, “What do you mean? I pack my own lunch.”

So it is with much of today’s youth, particularly minority youth, some of whom drive around town blasting their hip-hop and rap music, replete with lyrics about ‘ho’s’ and derogatory labels about themselves.

They’re completely immersed in negativity: negative lyrics, negative thoughts, and negative actions. They wonder why they can’t get a job, why people look upon them with disdain, and why they feel as if they’re outcasts.

They feel as if society at large doesn’t want them and that they’ll never become part of the economic mainstream. They feel as if they’re experiencing discrimination, and that the deck is stacked against them.

What they don’t realize is they’re ‘packing their own lunch,’ every morning, with subversive and debilitating thoughts. They’re dwelling in the gutter, perhaps being angry to all, and perpetuating low self-esteem, as if somebody is making them listen to this drivel.

The Blame Game

They’re becoming so much less than what they could be, blaming the ‘man’ or the ‘system’ or whatever. Meanwhile they are steeped evermore so in their own victimhood. Eventually, some are inextricably enmeshed in life-long patterns of self-destruction.

They are blocking their ability to discern possibilities. They are not taking advantage of countless opportunities in a country where abundance reigns supreme: Where laws are stacked in their favor in respect to getting a good education and a good job, and unmistakenly becoming a part of the economic mainstream.

How long will this mass self-charade continue? How long will disaffected youth continue to pack their own lunch in the form of horrible rap music, with lyrics that degrade everyone and anyone?

A Path with No Promise

How many more months, years, or decades will they succumb to ‘music’ that actually depletes one’s energies, lulls one into a false stupor, and sends the message that there’s no use in even trying?

Ten years from now, in 2031, will anything be different for people steeped in this negativity? What about in 2041? Or, 2051? Sadly, nothing is likely to change unless, one by one, such participants recognize that the path they’re on vanquishes each and every individual and convinces them that there is no way out.

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