My ultimate goal is my son, and a lot of other kids, to not have

Hear, O children of tomorrow, the words of Lil Baby, who once spoke with the fire of both struggle and hope: “My ultimate goal is my son, and a lot of other kids, to not have to grow up the way I grew up. I just give them a different outlook on something. I want to let them know they can have this much fun by doing something legal like me rapping for instance.” In these words lies the cry of a man who has walked through shadow and now seeks to guide others into light. They are not the idle boasts of fame, but the testimony of one who has tasted the bitterness of hardship and longs to plant sweeter fruit in the gardens of the next generation.

Mark well the first truth: his ultimate goal is not wealth, not renown, not even the fleeting delights of luxury, but his son and the multitude of kids who mirror his own past. This reveals the ancient principle that the worth of a man is measured not by what he hoards for himself but by what he leaves for those who follow. For the fathers of old built temples, wrote laws, or defended cities so that their children might inherit stability. Lil Baby, in his own time, seeks to build not temples of stone but outlooks of hope, sanctuaries of vision where the young may see possibilities beyond despair.

Consider the contrast he draws: the life he once knew, marked by peril and unlawful pursuits, against the joy he finds now in legal creation—rapping that transforms struggle into song, pain into poetry. It is here that we glimpse the eternal struggle between destruction and creation. Many who are born in hardship are tempted to survive by means that wound the spirit and bind the body. Yet to choose the legal path, to carve a way by art, labor, or skill, is to resist the chains of circumstance and to proclaim: I will not let darkness dictate my destiny.

Recall the tale of Frederick Douglass, who was born in bondage and denied the right to read, yet learned in secret, and with the power of words rose to become a voice for freedom. His gift of literacy, once forbidden, became a torch that illuminated the path of emancipation for countless souls. In Douglass we see the same principle that Lil Baby declares: that to give the next generation a different outlook, to show them the power of lawful creation rather than unlawful survival, is to lift them into a new world. The stories differ, the centuries divide them, yet the heartbeat of their mission is the same: to turn pain into promise.

Take heed also of the humility in his vision. He does not claim to save all, nor to erase hardship entirely, but to offer an outlook—a way of seeing. For it is often not the chains themselves but the blindness to alternatives that holds the youth captive. To show a child that joy can be found in creation, that laughter can ring even in the halls of legality, is to break a spell more powerful than iron. For once the mind sees possibility, the spirit will strive toward it.

The lesson, then, is clear: each among us has the power to guide the young away from the paths of shadow by the example of our own choices. We need not all be rappers, nor leaders of nations, but we can embody the principle of turning struggle into lawful creation. Parents, mentors, elders, and friends—your lives are scrolls upon which children read their future. What you write there, whether despair or hope, shapes destinies.

Therefore, O listener, take up this charge: live in such a way that your children and the children of others may see in you a model of strength, creativity, and integrity. Support the young in their talents, show them avenues of joy that do not chain them to destruction. Let your own triumphs, however small, be seeds planted in their soil. In doing so, you join the eternal work of fathers and mothers, poets and prophets, warriors and sages, who have all sought the same thing: that the generations to come need not suffer the burdens of the past.

And so the teaching is complete: that the truest measure of greatness is not in what one escapes from, but in what one builds for others. Lil Baby’s words stand as a reminder that our struggles need not be repeated; they can instead become the foundation of a brighter inheritance. Let us, then, labor not only for ourselves, but for the dawn awaiting those yet to be born.