Land of Opportunity Not Milk and Honey

Catrina Callahan wrote something on Facebook today and it is just brilliant. So here I have copied it. You need to read it :

Someone once asked me “Is there a place left on this earth where I can have a chance to be what I want to be? Because it sure ain’t America.” Honestly, that is the most ridiculous statement I have ever heard. This country was built as, and still is, the ONLY place on earth where you are allowed to be creative, inquisitive, self-sustaining, and have the opportunity to be whatever you want to be. But just what does that really mean?

What is this ‘opportunity’ they speak of? Does that mean at every corner of whatever avenue you choose, the streets will be lined with lush Opportunity trees where you can pluck different opportunities off like apples? Sadly, most people think so. They think that “The Land of Opportunity” means that they will have options and prime, plump, choices lined out for them on a silver platter where all they have to do is pick between them as they stroll along on a paved road to success and happiness.

Well, isn’t that idea just dripping with sugar and gumdrops? Indeed, that would be nice! Surely that is what “Opportunity” means right? Or is it? Let’s looks closer.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language states the definition of Opportunity as this:

op•por•tu•ni•ty: A chance for progress or advancement.

A chance. Not a fresh fruit platter with a chocolate fountain in the middle. Look alive people! Try having a shot for a decent life in Cuba, Russia, China, Sweden or Germany. Yeah sure, people around the world aren’t always living in third-world conditions. A lot of them are ‘happy,’ good, people just living their lives. But where is it they all flocked to back in the 20’s and 30’s….? America, that’s where! Why did they come? Because we could give them a chance. And unless you are pure blooded Native American, then your ancestors came here before you looking for what they couldn’t get elsewhere. A shot at making for themselves what no one else would let them achieve. They could be here what they couldn’t be elsewhere. Dreamers, goal seekers, and success finders.

It takes work though. When they said your great great grandpappy came to this country with five dollars in his pocket and died a millionaire it wasn’t because he walked off the boat and they handed it to him in a big sack. He worked for it. Worked hard, worked against the grain, worked against all odds, till his fingers bled, through rain, sleet, snow, and hail; but in the end he got it. Others countries have nothing but pain as a reward for that kind of labor. You are what you were born as, and you can’t change it.

What America offers is not assured success and happiness. It does not promise grandeur or greatness. It simply lays before you a chance. A chance to dream and the opportunity to accomplish it if you have the guts to get off your sleepy keister and run after it.

If you want opportunities, as is a plural sense, well you are going to have to make them through the definition of hard work your forefathers used, rather than our diluted definition of work that we use today. But if you want the chance to even go after your dreams at all, the chance to make those opportunities? If all you want is the single “opportunity” to try to succeed in your life, then America is the only place you’ll find that.

So go get em.

To see Catrina’s article in its’ original form, as well as the comments being made on it. Click Here.