I went home for spring break last week and while I was watching March Madness with my brother, a commercial came on that really got my attention. The commercial is for the sports drink Powerade and is called “The Rose that Grew from Concrete." It talked about how we admire those who have had it rough but still have managed to become successful. The commercial shows a kid in the rough part of Chicago who you later find out represents Derrick Rose before he “became” Derrick Rose. The image you see in the commercial before the Powerade logo is the line “We’re all just a kid from somewhere." The commercial’s message was basically that we all could be something amazing, someone who becomes a role model for others who follow in our footsteps.
I have in no way lived a hard life. I’m fortunate to have a two-parent household, siblings who care about me, and my family is well off financially. However, my siblings and I were taught that this is not the way life is for everyone, even for our parents. Before my parents had us, they weren’t in as good of a situation as they are now. When my parents first got married, my mom was working as a nurse and my dad was a pharmacist, neither very lucrative professions. Once they got married, my dad decided that in order to better support his family, he needed a better job so he enrolled in law school. He and my mom were the first in their families to go to college or get a higher education since neither of my parents’ families were well off and it wasn’t normal to go to college back then. Long story short, my parents knew what it meant to work hard for what they wanted and my parents now are reaping the rewards of that hard work and they made sure to let us know how important it was to work hard.
Of course, back when I first heard this from my parents, I just acknowledged them and forgot about it. Now, I see what they were talking about. Everything is competitive and no one is going to give you something to you simply because you want it badly. You’ve got to work for everything you want because this world of instant gratification we live in is not reality. There is always someone who is going to be faster, smarter and better at something than you. The only way to overcome that is with hard work, determination, and grit.
Our futures are a blank slate and God has given us the ability to do amazing things without lives, no matter what our upbringing. The only choice we have is to put our nose to the grindstone and work harder than we’d ever thought possible because hard work outweighs talent any day. We’re all capable of amazing things. We can be the next role models for future generations. We’re all just a kid from somewhere.
