The good life

The Gantt Report

The good life

By Lucius Gantt

     Most African Americans would love to live “the good life”!

They want the good marriage, the good relationship, the good baby mama, the good baby daddy, the good children, the good house, the good car, the good business, the good job, the good health, the good education, the good church, the good school, the good retirement, the good vacation, the good hair style, the good clothes, the good mind, the good body and so on.

Well, God helps those that want the good life that help themselves get the good life!

You have to get the good life. You can’t just sit around, lie around or sleep around and have the good life just fall into your lap someday.

The good life comes easy for some folk. Some get lucky, some inherit the good life but most people have to work hard to get the life and lifestyle they want.

Before you work, you have to recognize what the good life is to you. The good life to one person may be the worst life for someone else.

In reality, as you change, what you consider is a good life for you also changes. The good life for a child, the good life for a teen, the good life for an adult and the good life for a senior citizen may be drastically different.

The good life for a single person is not nearly the same as the good life for a happily married person. The good life for a person with wealth is far different in many respects from the good life of a homeless person or a jobless person.

The good life for a successful business owner is not the same as the good life for a worker on a job that faces evaluations every year, bad coworkers every work day or impossible, insensitive or wicked job supervisors.

Worse than not having the good life is having it and having the good life turn into the bad life!

So, once you are blessed with the good people, the good lifestyle, the good relations or the good income how do you keep it?

You keep the good life working just as hard to keep it as you did to get it. If you have a good man or good woman, you have to work hard to keep them. The same is true when it comes to keeping a job, finishing school, keeping that dream house, keeping that good car and keeping that fine body and that good health.

To keep the good life, you have to be steadfast! That means you have to be steady, not shady, not shaky, not slimy and not stupid. You can’t change moment by moment or minute by minute. You have to stay on the grind, so to speak.

To keep a good life, you have to be immovable! You have to be firm in your good position. You can’t let your girl friends or homeboys get you off of your good spot.  You can’t listen to people that tell you to get rid of your soul mate when those same people have never had a good lasting or loving relationship in their lives. Adults with sound minds can’t let their parents, siblings, children or anyone else tell them what is “good” for them. Good like beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Perhaps, the most important way to come up to or stay in the good life is to believe in your description and definition of the good life. Have faith in yourself. If you don’t trust yourself how can you expect others to trust in you?

My life is good. It can be better when I get more money because with more money I can do more things, go more places, help more people and help myself more.

Regardless if your life is good or bad, if you can read this column, you should be thankful you are among the living and you have another day and another opportunity to get life right!