I was asked the other evening “What’s is your why?  What motivates you to pick up your life, moving from Florida to Georgia?  What makes you work as a nurse but continue your entrepreneurial efforts to establish a travel business?”.  This was not an official interview.  Rather, it was a question I was to seriously consider this weekend and decide if I was going to give an extra push in my business or if I was going to back down.  It was said that if my “why” doesn’t make me cry then that’s not it.

I have already answered this question but not everyone can see it.  That’s okay.  Everyone or maybe no one has to see your vision.  That’s why it’s yours.  Only you need to see it.  That being said, I will be direct and to the point.  My motivation is to leave a legacy to my child, her children, my nephews (and upcoming niece) and to the world.  Most importantly to my community.  Does this mean I want to be written about in history books?  Maybe that I want to be Kardashian rich or Oprah famous?  No, I don’t want any of those things.  I just don’t want my life to amount to boxes of junk to be cleared out of a room or a house, sold to charities and then one neat pile that fits in a bin that’s pushed into a garage or up into an addict.  I want my life to be bigger than my death and the flame to light the way for generations to come.

I envy our grandparents.  I know that this sounds backwards. They have had so little in depression era upbringings.  Shipping off to war was a great honor and privilege and all that was required to make a family proud.  Women were just entering the workforce and every step made from the kitchen stove was considered pioneering.  Civil rights were fought and negotiated under their ballots at the polls.  Literally everything they did was life changing and legacy creating.

Then our parents, the baby boomers, with new opportunities and progress they once again changed our reality.  Computers, cellular phones, MTV, Al Gore’s internet.  Admittedly, we grew up spoiled into complacence.  Our parents have done and do everything for us.  Now, I am not a Millennial.  I am the silently judging Generation X.  What I say eliminates those distinguishing lines.  I speak simply on the children of the Baby Boomers.  Is it because that generation, as the name suggests, is so plentiful?  Is it because we are used to looking to the past for great deeds of Heroism and Philanthropry.  What happened to us?  What legacy do we leave the generations coming after us?

I want to establish a bridge to Cuba and other countries like it that have carried a stigma from ignorance passed down through generations.  To allow the world to see the island and other countries and continents that are often missed in a society of microwave attention spans.  I want to break the chains in a dilapidated employment system and reward each of my nieces and nephews as well as Angelina an LLC and a business plan to build their dream destiny.  The only stipulation is that they must each do the same for the generations beyond.  I may not see wealth in my lifetime.  I’m okay with that.  If I can just see progress and joy different from my own.

You don’t have to be a parent either.  This has been my desire as an aunt and even before then.  This is my prayer for those that come after us.  That in this age of octogenarian politicians as our only voice of a future they will never live to see, a retirement they plan for a time they have already survived.  My generation has slept too long, waiting to be told what to do.  What GenX and Millennial children is your why.  Why are you here? And what, pray tell, are you leaving behind beyond social media, societal desensitization, and melting ice caps because we’ve refused to accept the torch that was passed to us and acknowledge the little eyes looking on in expectation?

~LaTisha Carbonell