If someone would have came up to me at 15 years ago and asked me what my life would be like at 30, I don't know if I would have described the life I'm currently living. I use to think that having a lot of money was the ultimate success. I told myself at 16 that I was going to be a millionaire. So at 30 I find that I'm still on a journey to create my success, the only thing is my perspective of success has changed. Being financially stable is something I want but not just because I want to say I have a lot of money. I want to be financially stable because I want to take care of my family. I want to create job opportunities for people in my community and one-day people all over the world. I want to create more opportunity for young kids in my city. I want to create programs that help build the youth and young adults. I don't want to just prepare them to be good workers, but I want to give them the tools so that they can create success on their own. 

Having money is cool, but using the resources that you created off your success and giving back to people you know will benefit is even better. I have never been able to get into excepting a career where I have to work 9 to 5, I get two to four weeks’ vacation and I give all my time to a corporation that could care less about my wellbeing. I believe that there are enough resources for all people to live equally and peacefully. The people in this county except that only one percent of the population control worlds wealth. The only reason that poverty exist is because extreme wealth exists. I wasn’t brought to this planet to be a slave. To be honest most of the wealth in this country came from the exploitation of people that look like me. So it's hard for me to buy into a system that wants me to work 30 years before I will be in a financial position to take a break. People of color gave enough labor to this county, actually we built this shit, if it wasn't for us it would be know America. 

I was watching one of my favorite movies called the Freedom writers. It was about this public school in California. It showed a lot of the social issues the youth are dealing with currently in 2016 and this movie came out in the early 2000's. Some of these teenagers’ issues were gun violence, police brutality and broken family structures. This movie also showed how this education system segregates our children through classism, and racism. How certain groups of kids get better books, resources, teachers and more opportunity to succeed in their life. But other kids don't get those same books, teachers or opportunities. Instead they get put in a system that patiently waits for them to fail. Why I liked this movie so much was because it made me remember what made me want to change the world for the better in the first place and that was hope. This teacher didn't have all the resources she needed to

Teach her class properly, and the school deemed the kids she was teaching as savages and wouldn't give her books. So she went out and got two part-time jobs so she could take her kids on trips to places like the Jewish Holocaust museum. Or to a nice restaurant where they could see life outside the poverty stricken box they were forced to live in. These experiences didn't take away the problems they were going through, but it did give them hope and inspiration that they would be able to get through whatever adversity they were facing. I've personally been through a lot. I was that bad kid growing up that always got in trouble. The teacher had to call my house over 100 times. I didn't listen as a kid; I gave my grandparents a very hard time. They had patience with me, they build discipline in me, they built character and showed me how to navigate through this crazy world. So no matter what life through my way l always had hope that things would work out for the better and it did. One of the most important points in the Freedom Writers movie is love, hope, and family. The teacher that changed the lives to all those kids didn't have all the answers. But she was honest, she had a pure spirit and she wanted to leave a lasting impression on her students regardless of their ethnicity or gender. 

As 2pac said, “If there is no hope for the youth, then the truth is there is no hope for the future”. If we don't give the youth the tools needed to be better, then we can't  expect for the masses of their generation to succeed. You see success and poverty can be handed down through the generations but some may think it's about the materialism part like an inheritance of money that you get from your great grandfather, or acres of property your family may leave you. Or let's look at it on the other side of the fence. When you look poverty, you can see that you can also pass that down through generations with systems like classism and racism. This gives certain groups better or more opportunities then other groups. The judicial system leads to millions of people of color being poverty stricken because once you get convicted of a felony you might as well have been born in the 1930's because you will be living in the new Jim Crow. Although you may think material things lead to you being poor or wealthy it really has nothing to do with it. Because you can make something out of nothing as long as you believe so. You can come from poverty and still become wealthy. You can come from wealth and still end up poor. Success and failure starts and ends in the mind. Your mind is what will help you create and maintain a successful life. Your mind is what will lead you to fail and to continue failing. Remember that your destiny has nothing to do with anybody else but you. You can manifest anything as long as you can hold on to the thought long enough for it to become a reality. It doesn't matter what situation you come across in your life, remember that your faith is determined on your mindset not your circumstance. If you can control your thoughts you will easily be able to control your reality, actually you will be able to control all realities. Love will save this world; hate will continue to destroy. I read this quote that said “The creative adult is the child that survived”. I am that survivor and if your reading this you are as well. Our goal is to bring people together through love and spirit and remind them that we are family and we should treat each other like such. The earth will become paradise when love becomes a lifestyle and a way of living rather than a feeling or emotion. Now that's a Koolforlife way of thinking, thanks for reading and until next time make sure you stay Koolforlife.