Sometimes it's better to live stress free to escape from the monotony of capitalism.
It is May 17th and I find myself in a peculiar position all too common to working class folk in America. My time is bound by work, school, dreams, and debt. It's almost as though this pathway of an existence was preordained. I was born into a middle class household to a single mother, determined to succeed in a country in which she nor her mother are not deeply tied to. Went to a grim and average public school from elementary to high school, passed by teachers and administrators that knew themselves, that the system in which I was spending the majority of my time in, was not adequately preparing my naive mind for the roller coaster of emotions life would bring to me once I was old enough to be perceived as a threat.
I am not allowed to be afraid. It is a requirement that I protect and that I provide. The expectation is that one day i will make a happy family, or is it?
For a long time I've been fighting, there is a constant war against my very being in which I have had to constantly resist. Police are hunting me. I must display my intellectual abilities because there's been on numerous occasions an underlying assumption that I as uneducated or ignorant. I fight the pull from many directions in which others want me to sway my path. Social work, Artist, criminal, lover boy, influencer. My internal reality need to be defensively protected my soul against the demeaning assault of micro-aggressions and economic stimuli that triggers personal and inter-generational trauma. It's quite cumbersome.
To be frank , life without money, leads to the simplicity of life being enjoyed. I'm not a millionaire (yet), I don't have those two masters degrees that I write out on my bucket list when I was 14. The reality of that life may not turn out as planned has shown itself in many ways. And that's ok. It's beginning to become increasingly clear whats meaningless and was fulfilling internally and externally.
Instead of ruminating about what next in this rats in which I am already 400 steps behind. The now sits in front of me proudly, almost touchable. The air while walking down the street to my bookstore is sweeter. Task which used to drain me spiritually, are now a fun challenge I enjoy when my mind, body, spirit, and time allows.
I am no W.E.B Du Bois, Langston Hughes, or James Baldwin. Neither am I perfect or god. The answers in which you could be looking for are not indefinitely in or between these lines. In truth, the satisfaction of free thought is built into the functionality of imperfection. These are three thoughts that I have had amidst coming to self revealing conclusions about race, masculinity, and toxic productivity; that stopped me from fighting to get back to where I was, but pushed me to move forward by enjoying the journey.
Engaging with the present moment defines who you truly are.
How many life defining moments do we miss because they simply go right over our heads? I know this section is titled " engaging with the present moment", but can we truly maximize the capacity in which we interface with the reality that stands before us without knowing historically who we are as a people. The capacities have no ceiling nor bottom. There is a life lesson that patterns through out time tell us.
Moments, in which the seldom single thoughts entire groups have in common lead to similar experiences, spread out through time and space. In 1865 the trajectory of the African American experience was radically altered by slavery being abolished, in which the enslaved where made free men and woman physically. The fact of the matter is, without that relatively impulsive action being taken by those in power, for pure reasons or not, I may have well been typing this without the ability to receive income from my talents.
I tend to use history as a lens to examine patterns in human nature which leads to meta breakthroughs shadowing behavior. The weary blues of yesterday HAVE to be acknowledged without a doubtful cause of bias in which the world is seen. Staying in the present as a conscious human being socially underpinned as a problem surrounded by illness, serves as the grounding experience I bond to you. Separate from that ,my soul is free to dance to music.
My body flows, jumps, and ebbs to the beat that is played by the modern day bureaus that bull the masses into the force. In a work culture that perpetuates working long hours on multiples projects in the pursuit of financial freedom, it almost feels as though disconnecting to be with ones inner world is a sin.
These divine walls have finally begun to let the paint of yesterdays task dry.
Over and over
Day to day
The same as yesterday.
When will I get to be a human?
Your abilities are the quality time you spend with them.
Freedom is a mindset and a powerful that can drastically change the measure in which one perceives thyself. According to stancecoaching.com There are two criteria that determines fulfilling quality time spent with ones self.
1. You are focusing on your internal experience
2. You're actively caring about yourself
Modern society has developed some negative connotation when it comes to being alone, when ones time is seized from the contributions we are socialized to believe as normal. Often times growing up, being sent to my room was a punishment, as was the case with many children. At University, it is frowned upon by party goers to stay inside on a Friday or a Saturday night. Presumed ignorantly as a "loser", feeding into the smokey mirrors that blur the vision between them and themselves. Our brains have been hard wired to believe that being alone is't "normal" as the internal critic would say as though the subjectivity of the word holds universal truth upon a general experience.
According to a study done at Yale University, group brainstorming leads to less originality in the thought. Upon groups, the individual imagination and creative ideas are stifled. In the social study, brainstorming let to more ideas, whereas individual thinkers generated a higher amount of quality ideas. Another finding was, when charged with specific task, such as generating a creative idea, the individuals were able to produce fewer ideas, but the solutions to problems posed were innovative!
There is an end. Embrace it.
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