No rest for the weary

I have now reached that akward point where I have acheived another major goal in my life. Its a limbo like feeling where I am indecisive as to which way I should go. I am on the proper route to a normal life with adequate amounts of success, but as a LYMLifer that's is not enough. A masters degree is a big acheivement to many. It shows discipline, perseverance, and plenty of sleepless nights. It shows a mastering of academic concepts and theories, but upon completion of the curriculum comes the point of real world application. The true test is in applying the lessons learned in the classroom. I am looking forward to such tests but more importantly to me is the time that I now have to apply to LYMLife. My previous neglect is definetly inexcusable and I hope to never go through that again. Over the course of this weekend I had a very enlightening conversation which called heavily on my view of LYMLife. I had a hard time telling a friend exactly what LYMLife was. He saw it as a way of life and he asked what exactly does it entail. Forced to put some boundaries on it I explained it is the marketing for a dreamers lifestyle.  It embodies the everyday hustler. It is the code that go-getters abide by. LYMLife is the choice you make instead of just existing in life. LYMLife is the revolution of self realization. LYMLife is saying "No" to the norm. Some say I am successful I say my journey has only just begun. Until next time keep it LYM.

Wisdom Wednesdays

This weeks quote  will be presented in its entirety after a long hiatus and is dedicated to the prince and the sunshine in my life. I hope you will feel the same way I did when I came upon it during my search for something meaningful for new beginnings and continued hopes for a richer existence. The author is unknown but I will venture to say it is timely for us and timeless as well. 

"Once upon a time there was an island where all the feelings lived; happiness, sadness and all the others, including love.

One day it was announced to all of the feelings that the island was going to sink to the bottom of the ocean.So all the feelings prepared their boat to leave.

Love was the only one that stayed. She wanted to preserve the island paradise until the last possible moment.

When the island was almost totally under, Love decided it was time to leave. She began looking for someone to ask for help. Just then Richness was passing by in a grand boat.  Love asked, "Richness, Can I come with you on your boat?"
Richness answered, "I'm sorry, but there is a lot of silver and gold on my boat and there would be no room for you anywhere."

Then Love decided to ask Vanity for help who was passing by. Love cried out, "Vanity, help me please." 
"I can't help you." Vanity said, "You are all wet and will damage my beautiful boat."

Next, Love saw Sadness passing by.  Love said, "Sadness, please let me go with you."  Sadness answered, "Love, I'm sorry, but, I just need to be alone now."

Then, Love saw Happiness. Love cried out, "Happiness, please take me with you."  But Happiness was so overjoyed that he didn't hear Love calling to him.

Love began to cry.  Then, she heard a voice say, Come Love, I will take you with me."  It was an elder.

Love felt so blessed and overjoyed that she forgot to ask the elder his name.

When they arrived on land the elder went on his way.
Love realized how much she owed the elder.

Love then found Knowledge and asked,
"Who was it that helped me?

It was Time", Knowledge answered.

"But why did Time help me when no one else would?", Love asked.

Knowledge smiled and with deep wisdom and sincerity, answered, 
"Because only time is capable of understanding how great Love is."

Until seven sunsets, hoping you read this for yourself, print it for someone who may need it, pass it on to those you love.....But mostly may you LYM (Leave Your Mark) with Love always LOVE.

We Still Standing

At times like these I always feel like I'm back at square one. As I start to get somewhere I am always forced start over. A day off costs me the same as a month of idle behavior. In a game that's forever evolving and money along with the willingness to give handouts may buy you popularity and fame LYMLife is forced to struggle. Our resilience to popular behavior some say is our downfall. I say its our code, its what we live by. Stickin to the code is the only thing that keeps us free. Some came in to make money but we came to change lives. We came to shake the worlds foundation. A bunch of misfits, screwups, and savages came together for a joint venture. This venture became the cause. If you support you riding with us if you don't well I'm sorry to hear that but sleep will not be lost. Marcus Garvey said it takes roughly two to three generations for a great odea to truly manifest but with all due respect to the great Marcus Garvey I've made it my mission to prove that theory wrong. Your help would be greatly appreciated but without it I still believe I stand a fighting chance. Until next time keep it LYM!

Music Video Monday

Music Video Mondays

Boston, Bombs, and Bigotry

When tragedy strikes in our country, it has an uncanny ability to bring us all together in a moment where we tear down any politically or socially constructed divisions and grieve together as a nation. During that rare moment, we are all the same people, sharing the same pain. There is no Black, White, Hispanic, Gay, Straight, Conservative, or Liberal. There are only Americans… unless of course you are an Arab or Muslim or anything else that might “look it”.

When tragedy strikes in our country, the immediate reaction for most of us is to send our thoughts and prayers to those who are affected. We try to bear the burden with those directly affected so we may help our nation heal and move past it. For the rest of us however, we become immediately overwhelmed by a relentless anxiety brought on by the fear that whoever caused this tragedy might look like us, have a similar name as us, speak a similar language as us, eat the same foods as us, or pray in the same manner as us.

When tragedy strikes in our country, our immediate reaction is to pray to God in the name of all that is holy and heavenly that whoever did this unspeakable act does not bear even the slightest resemblance to us in any way.

“Please God do not let the guy be an Arab”

“Please God, just please do not let him be Muslim”

“Please, Please, PLEASE don’t let him look like me or my brother or my son”

We aren’t given the privilege of grieving with our fellow Americans; rather we must first grapple with the fact that we are automatic suspects by virtue of the B’s that our parents use in place of their P’s, or the ever-present trifecta of hummus, pita, and olive oil in our kitchens, or inability of our names to be properly transliterated into Latin script. Our first reaction is to become flooded with fear that some misguided soul might blame the tragedy on “our people” and attack us in retaliation. Our first reaction is come to terms with the fact that there is no reason for us not to be a suspect and be detained for no reason. Only after that, if the rest of the nation allows it, can we join in the grieving.

This week’s horrific events in Boston were no different. As the whole nation got together to grieve, many Arabs, Muslims, Sikhs, Indians, Pakistanis, and anyone else who might fit into the carefully constructed stereotype of what a terrorist might look like first had to ready ourselves to become a place for America to rest its cross hairs upon. A process only made more frustrating by the initial reluctance to label the attack as an act of terror due to the lack of a suspect who might fit the bill. This of course is not anything we aren’t used. Yet, we who are all too familiar with the “random” search at the airport know that this discomfort, like the kind brought on by the touch of a TSA agent’s blue rubber gloves, is one that we can never get accustomed to. But it is important to understand where these expectations of what the terrorist will look like come from.

See, in America we are deliberately selective when throwing the “T” word around for any random attack on the public meant to instill fear or terror. There seems to be a set of guidelines that dictate the how this label of terrorism is used in the media and by politicians.

If we take a look at the past and compare two seemingly similar attacks that occurred with the purpose of spreading terror and taking lives. We can see just how different the two cases are and how they are perceived accordingly:

1) If we take the case of the Columbine High shootings in 1999, we can see that a pair of students at columbine high school carried out an attack that killed 13 people.

2) On the other hand, about a decade later in a Fort Hood, Texas military base, a member of the army carried out an attack that killed 13 people.

In the case of the Columbine shootings, we received a narrative of two mentally unstable kids pushed to the edge by constant bullying and ridicule; for all intents and purposes they were victims as well. In the case of the Fort Hood shooting we received the narrative of a deranged bloodthirsty terrorist, nothing more.

So we are left to wonder what made one shooter a terrorist and the others just your run-of-the-mill criminals. The difference is that one shooter was a Muslim, Palestinian Arab whose name was Nidal Malik Hassan while the others were white teenagers from American Suburbia named Dylan and Eric.

When it comes to the labeling a horrendous attack on civilians, our own government plays this game as well. The day after the attack, President Obama bravely declared that any time bombs are used to kill civilians, it is terrorism. But when we apply his own logic to his foreign policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it doesn't quite add up. In what is a rare case of true journalism these days, one reporter spoke truth to power by asking White House Press Secretary Jay Carney if the US Drone strike that left 11 Afghani children dead earlier this month constitutes terrorism. It seems a logical association if we use the Presidents own words. Of course the only difference is that the loss of life was caused by our government, in the name of national security making the drone operator who pulled trigger while tucked away safely in a Syracuse military base a national hero, destinction that didn't give Mr. Carney the confidence not to dodge the question. So it really begs the question: of what a terrorist actually looks like?

The fact is there is no answer. You might ask any anyone in, lets say, Ocala, Florida, what a terrorist looks like and they'll probably give you the answer that fits in with the media's masterful proliferation of the the bearded man with a head wrap and explosives strapped to his chest. But ask any child in Pakistan what a Terrorist might look like and he is likely to describe a middle-aged man with a charismatic smile, wearing a crisp blue suit, brandishing a eagle pinned to his lapel. 

When we take a second to look back, we see that there have been a large number of terrorist attacks in this country over the past few decades. A closer look at these attacks shows us that the vast majority of these attacks were carried out by people with names such as McVeigh, Rudolph, Kaczynski, Mathews, Hughes, Crocker, Dillard, and many more that look like they might have been pulled out of a Nebraska phone book. But we forget these Terrorist attacks because we write off the terrorists as anomalous cases that are unrepresentative of the entirety of White America, people who were likely thoroughly unstable as far as sanity is concerned, unlike the Arabs and Muslims of course who are just naturally predisposed to violence.

These stereotypes are further placed in our collective mind when either the FBI or the NYPD fabricate a terror plot by pushing a young, unstable person who “fits the bill” to develop enough aggression to plot an attack on a public space. They then foil their manufactured terror plot just in time to save the day and justify the unending abuses to our civil liberties done in the name of maintaining our security.

It is all of this and more that has its hand in creating the environment that makes us guilty by enculturation when Tragedy strikes. It is these practices used in the media that make it possible for a victim injured in the Boston Terrorist attack to be considered an instant suspect simply because he was running away (like everyone else who was in the vicinity of an explosion), but more so because he was Saudi Arabian and thus suspicious enough to be tackled as he ran (much like a young Black or Latino male walking down a street in Brooklyn is suspicious enough to warrant a his eighth Stop-and-Frisk search in the span of 3 weeks).  This carefully constructed imagery of terrorists, acts a barrier in allowing our country to truly unite in the face of tragedies such as that which occurred in Boston. It creates a second set of potential victims who could fall prey to bigoted attacks made in retaliation to terror attacks, and further opens the wounds we’ve already sustained. These preconceived notions of what a terrorist looks like should be put to rest so that when tragedy strikes in our country, we all can join together to support one another as a nation, rather than having some of us have worry about becoming targets ourselves, or if any one of us happen to fall victim to an attack like this, we can receive the same condolences, thoughts, and prayers as the rest of the victims instead of suspicious looks and implications of guilt.

Never Give Up

No matter who you are and how comfortable you might be in your own skin we have all had that God questioning moment. That moment where the worls just opened up and attempted to swallow you whole. Your parents told you no matter how bad you got it someone out there has it way worse, but sometimes you felt like damn if I had it any worse I would I would quit. I will tell you just like a personal trainer would your mind quits 1000 times before your body does. The truth is a weak mind quits 1000 times before your body does. Same as a rational mind. In the event you have taken your mind past the rational threshold then I must warn you quitting no longer exists because failure is the only outcome other than success. At that point I tried doesn't exist there is only I did it or I died trying. So keep fighting for every inch every foot and never give back what you earned. Earn your keep and protect your earn. Until next time keep it LYM