“Just Do It” is the famous slogan of the swoosh-embellished athletic wear company Nike. And how right they are. That 3 word phrase should be what is branded into everyone’s minds from the day they’re born. Just imagine how much success the world would breed if everyone simply took that advice. However, as passionate as I am about this, it’s admittedly hard to write an essay about just that much less keep an audience entertained. So let’s dig a little deeper, shall we?

My belief, more specifically, is that we live in an age nowadays where everything is just handed to us it seems. I’m not going to lie, growing up in an affluent county in the suburbs of Chicago, I’m pretty well off. And I can certainly say the same about most of my classmates at my school. So we’ve begun to expect everything to be just as easy as it has been for the past years of our lives: mommy and daddy providing us our food, home, and education just like that.

Well I can tell you right now, that’s complete crap.

You think in the real world, once you graduate college, mommy and daddy are still going to be enthusiastically supporting you financially? Heck no. Once you have that fancy diploma from that fancy school, your parents are most likely to say, “Congratulations! Now get a job.” They still provide their undying love but it is less likely to be with the swipe of a credit card now that you’re a big bad adult. You can’t sit around in your old bedroom you’ve had since birth with trophies of long-ago high school achievements staring at and mocking you while the rest of the world is out there making something out of itself. You need to go be part of that progressive and productive world.

Okay, so now that I’ve brought you a newsflash that you can’t just rely on your parents, there’s another problem. You’re still expecting things to just come to you. “Get a job? Sure! I’ll go apply right now!” Good luck finding any job that’ll hire you with no experience in this economy. So what do you do when you can’t take yet another day of sitting by the phone and waiting for employers to call back? You persevere. You keep applying. You don’t stop. And you keep pushing the envelope until something finally comes up.

Easy, right? Well, no. Sorry, but as easy as I may have made that sound, it takes a lot of work. And willingness to work, too. Did Franklin D. Roosevelt become one of the country’s greatest presidents and save our nation from horrific conditions just by doing nothing? Absolutely not. Did Neil Armstrong become the first man to walk on the moon just by sitting around on his butt waiting for something to happen? Again, no.
There’s a quote out there that’s been used in countless movies, and it goes something like this: “Some are born great, while others achieve greatness.” I’m going to have to disagree on that one and give my own little spin on it. I believe no one is born great, but that greatness is only achieved over time and through dedication. So FDR and Neil Armstrong may have had their bad days when things didn’t go as they envisioned, but the reason they succeeded was because they turned their failures into lessons and kept at it. You’re not going anywhere if you just sit around and wait for things to happen. If you want to be a lawyer, cool! Go to law school and make it work. And if law school doesn’t work out, find something else you dream of and make it happen. You’ll never know if you don’t try so just do it. So what if it doesn’t work out 100%? Hey, at least you’ve got a good story to tell your kids.
I’ve grown up in situations much like the ones I just complained about. My parents are both employed and make a decent living. My socioeconomic definition would likely be “upper middle class”. I go to a great high school with a splendid curriculum and I plan on going to a large university and doing something with my life. So, it does seem apparent that I’ve had everything handed to me, so why should you believe a word of what I just said?
Well, because I’ve also grown up in situations where I was forced to make something of myself, where I was forced by circumstance to do something to change my life. When my parents got divorced in 2004, I stayed sad for a little while. I was unhappy, confused, and it led to a bad place in my life. But I reevaluated and decided that’s not how I wanted to remain feeling for the rest of my life. So I got over it, and I did what I’m encouraging everyone to do with writing this essay: I just did something. I changed it for myself and made myself happy. And that was when I was just two weeks into being 15 years old.
The moral of that story was that me, an awkward and meek little kid, just plain and simple little old me, changed my own life because I just did something. I’m certainly not FDR or Neil Armstrong or Ghandi or anyone else who is famously in the textbooks. But because I got myself out of that kind of slump by not sitting around and waiting for it to happen or waiting for other people to do it for me, I now have aspirations and goals and direction in my life.
I want everyone to take what I’m saying seriously. I know it all sounds harsh at times and that last part got a little cheesy for me, but consider it. I mean, it is true because let’s be honest, no one’s going to just give you a house and an income without wanting something in return. But also, no one can just hand you your own life and experiences waiting for you ahead on a silver platter. You have to make those happen yourself by just doing something. Anything can go anywhere in your life when you just take the leap and do something, but you’re going to miss out on a heck of a lot if you expect things to be done for you. You might be on the right track, but you’ll go nowhere if you stay put.