Inspiring Self-Investment in Future Generations

Invest in yourself.

Such a short sentence with so much inside each word. But what does it actually mean to invest in yourself?

Growing up in the mid-Southern part of the United States, I found hard work to be a language that must be learned and mastered. Raised by two minority country-bred entrepreneurs, today I still cannot escape the pull of putting a hand to a plow – literally and figuratively. Education and betterment were equally and constantly put before me as a must for investment in myself.

Indeed, my parents’ generation of baby boomers industrialized the world, lifting the veil on the need for knowledge and expertise, a shift that gave birth to a savvy millennial generation.

I excelled in primary education and went on to do the same in my collegiate years. I worked hard to meet and exceed educational system standards, and have found a stride in being a “forever learner,” with much information at my fingertips.

But it’s clear that there’s been a change in how the world works, influenced in part by pandemic fallout. Information is now so intangible, and “expertise” is reduced to sound bites rather than respected foundations. The accessibility of all this (mis)information can sometimes challenge the grassroots principles of growth and investment.

So, how do we teach the values of knowledge and expertise within our growing families in this day and age? Furthermore, in a city of immigrants like Miami, how do we value the sacrifice and tenets of our families, wrestle to extract what’s best from institutionalized education and realize our position on what self-investment means?

Does your teenager try to convince you of the usefulness of social media? Does your elementary student find paper and pencil mundane and unengaging? Does your toddler prefer an interactive screen to a play table, Montessori or STEAM methods of discovery?

Maybe you’re feeling the shift in your home with your young children, or perhaps you’re hearing certain antithetical phrases repeated over and over again, pushing against your upbringing or values.

What do you do when one of your kids says “I don’t know if I want to go to college?”

Family values and respect run deep in our city, from Afro-Caribbean homes to Latin families from Central or South America, and well into our other cultures and families of French, Russian, Italian and Asian descent.

The world is represented in our city and our differences are apparent, but the generational desire for betterment is common ground, although it’s perhaps expressed differently.

As an educator, I watched this truth collide in my classroom over the last five years. No matter the ethnic background, by and large, the families and guardians of my students wanted investment in their children to be owned by their child. My role was to foster, govern and facilitate an appetite for learning, while adhering to institutional content and pace. My hope was to do my job but give my students something more – discovery of the joy in learning and investing in themselves.

That was what I wanted to do as a teacher. As a mother, that passion runs even deeper.

As parents, we have a unique opportunity to anchor timeless principles while embracing how they can be learned. We can teach our families what self- investment means without selling out the good ol’ paper and pencil. The path paved by our parents and ancestors before us roots us.

Here’s the challenge for parents, caregivers, aunties and grandparents: We have to do some hard self-discovery and processing.

We need to ask real questions.

We must ask ourselves what the bottom line is regarding what we want the next generation to achieve through self-investment.

If you lean toward a certain pathway, ask yourself why. Process with others in your same stage of life. Challenge yourself to listen to another culture’s perspective even if you resolve to disagree. This takes humility and intentionality, but hey – we are teaching timeless principles here, right?

Push up those sleeves and do the hard work for yourself, first. That will enable you to lead our future generations well.

Diamone Ukegbu is a local Little Haiti artist, creative, mom and wife.