Misdirection? What are we missing?

“I will stay here stuck inside of me, cause I can’t take the pressure outside. Hurry, get here, save me in time to be something good.”

Every time I think about those lyrics to my brother Allan Walker’s song “Something Good,” I think about a young man now facing serious criminal charges for taking part in a senseless, brutal act.

If convicted, chances are he will be sent away for so many years that he will have spent more years behind bars than as a free man when he is released.

I know who he is. I know where he is. I know the crime he is accused of taking part in, but I can’t share any of that with readers because he still hasn’t had his day in court. So, why am I writing about him? Because I believe it is with young men like him that we have to figure

out where the disconnect lies and the road leading into the prison pipeline begins.

And I also wonder if my brother’s lyrics — “Hurry, get here, save me in time to be

something good” — applies to him and so many other young men that I see every day who appear to have their feet under them but no direction.

I saw this young man regularly on the bus at nights for months as we headed home from our places of employment.

So, I was shocked when I got a press release from police and there was his mug shot, big as life, and a description of his alleged crime. It floored me. How does someone who gets up and goes to work every day — and by the tedium of public transportation, no less — decide to allegedly participate in a crime that even under generous circumstances wouldn’t have netted a lot of money? Why does this happen? He was working, so therefore, he should have had a reasonable expectation that his life — good, bad or otherwise — would get better.

But for some reason, whatever it was, he went for a score that would have netted him very little but is going to cost him a lot if convicted.

What are we missing as a society? Why are people no longer interested in the long haul to success and gratification?

This is not just about poverty or any of the contributing factors that make it difficult for low-income people to have a better life.

But maybe it is about the expectations that Americans have about living in the greatest country in the world, but finding it falls short for too many who are on the inside looking out.

I’m wondering if America’s promise and the image of the dream life it presents — a good job and a nice home — that so many are finding elusive is one of the real problems.

Maybe the message needs to be changed because the one of hard work gets you ahead is dead, buried alongside the many hard-working people who still needed a gofundme page to leave this Earth respectfully.

Maybe that is why so many men step off the well-traveled road, because they don’t see a horizon bearing fruit, just one that keeps getting farther away.

I talk frequently in the newsroom about my experiences on public transportation — what I hear, what I see. It’s frustrating, but provides me with tremendous insight to people, and their conversations allow me to step into their lives momentarily.

And I can tell you, there are too many young men who are working but frustrated with what it puts in their pockets and they don’t see a way forward. And that can spell trouble. I don’t know the circumstances of the young man’s past who is the subject of this column. I don’t know what will be the outcome of his case.

But I do know he was earning a living and appeared to be on society’s path when he allegedly took part in the crime he is accused of; that makes me wonder if my brother’s lyrics ring true for so many others. The question is, can we?