Living the arc of the American Dream means we provide our children with a better life than what we experienced. We correctly gauge success by giving kids a more loving and comfortable upbringing than the lives that our parents provided us. It is a staple we strive for from one generation to the next.
The bar was easy for yours truly to do this for our three children at home: Maksym (7), Emeryk (we call him Emmy, 5), and Victoria (3).
My childhood home was rampant with abuse and raging alcoholism. Food was scarce. We lived in a tiny house in an alley in one of the most impoverished and dangerous neighborhoods in Buffalo, New York. Our biological father got hammered every Saturday night after calling bingo at our church and gambled away his entire paycheck, leaving us with very little.
I thank the Lord for that struggle. I am blessed because of those hardships. It molded me into the man I am today. Necessity is the mother of all invention, and those difficult challenges forced me to work ten times harder, faster, and smarter in order to escape the throes of extreme poverty.
At six years old we walked by ourselves through a rough neighborhood to our local Boys and Girls’ Club. As a “shortcut” we would hop trains or walk the railroad tracks that cut the time of our walk in half.
When I wanted new clothes, I worked.
In the summer I cleaned a campground picking up cigarette butts and trash from multiple parks. Back home I picked up a job working at a corner store that had a meat market in the back. At 14 years old I was taught how to take apart massive circular saws to clean excess meat and bone from big blades. I did the same with the cutting boards used to slice meat.
When I was given financial aid warnings from Syracuse University to pay end of semester bills or I would be kicked out of college, I worked.
One summer I stocked shelves and loaded trucks overnight at a supermarket, then went straight to a job at my Catholic Church doing odd construction and landscaping jobs.
I eventually got hired at WSTM-TV in Syracuse as a junior in college, at first working as a photojournalist and then a reporter 30-40 hours per week, all the while taking a full time load of courses to earn my undergraduate degree.
Yes, my early life was a struggle, but through God’s grace and hard work I’ve been fortunate to have not only broken a vicious cycle of public assistance and poverty that plagued my family, but have been blessed to have achieved personal and professional success. I am living the American Dream.
Thank heavens, the upbringing my wife and I provide our kids is the polar opposite of my upbringing.
I lived in Columbus, Ohio and commuted home on weekends for a year while working as Spokesman and Deputy Communications Director for Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign for President of the United States. Ashley and the kids would drive up on many weekends to see me. We fell in love with the 15th most populous city in America.
Since then, we take an annual trek to Columbus. One year we visit their Zoo, the next year the Center of Science and Industry (COSI). It’s a fancy title for their Science Museum. This year we visited COSI and added an interactive performance of the children’s video creator “Danny Go” at the Palace Theatre. He’s popular on social media for singing and dancing videos.
If I could have bottled up pure joy in all three of our kids, I could have done it on this trip to Columbus. My heart exploded watching the smilies on their faces, especially Emmy while he danced and swung his ridiculously overpriced strobe light that we bought at the concession stand.
Then it hit me, in a good way, like a gut punch: thank God these kids will never, ever know (God willing) the struggle and hardships I experienced in life. I never thought such an emotional or reflective moment would hit me while in the middle of a kids’ dance routine in Columbus, Ohio, but here we are.
When the owner of the South Shore Press and I reflect on our respective childhoods, one quote consistently pops up in our conversations:
"Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times." According to the Google Machine these words of wisdom are attributed to G. Michael Hopf.
I struggle mightily with this concept, because dear God, no parent wants their children to struggle and experience “hard times.” Never. It would be repulsive and abusive to manufacture “struggle” just because we believe in the theory that good times can create “weak men.”
Mentally ill, radical progressives often create false struggles and injustices in their feeble minds to pretend to be victims. They choose to be a victim rather than a victor, when in reality they’re truly limousine liberals with amazing lives and practically nothing to complain about.
The best I can do is focus on faith in teaching them important life lessons so they can experience good times AND become strong and independent adults. That answer can be found in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18: “Be joyful always, pray at all times, be thankful in all circumstances.”
If we teach our kids through our faith based actions to work hard, play hard, and be joyous, prayerful, and thankful in all circumstances, then at least we’ve created the environment where they can survive and thrive in this crazy world of ours.
We would have done our part as parents.
The rest is up to them.