The thing you’re mocked for lacking today may be sitting on top of everything you’ll ever need. Do the humble work. Study the ground no one else bothers to read. And never let someone who measures you by your shoes convince you that’s the measure that matters. The people who leave you in the dust are telling you they could never see you. Let them go. The earth keeps its secrets for the ones patient enough to dig.
Chloe left me in the dust on graduation day for a man with a nicer car.
I picked my degree up out of that dust, carried concrete blocks for two years, and bought back my dead father’s worthless land.
The worthless land was worth millions.
And the woman who couldn’t love a man in cracked shoes came crawling back to a man in a mining empire—
not because she finally saw me,
but because the earth finally made me visible to someone who was only ever looking at the money.
She wanted what was under the ground.
She should have wanted the man standing on it.
My father sold his land to give me a future.
It turned out the future was in the land the whole time.
He gave me everything.
I just had to carry a few thousand blocks, and read the dirt he apologized for,
to find out.
Rest easy, Dad.
The dirt wasn’t worthles
