Each One, Reach One

“Everybody needs somebody sometime.”

Greetings folks and welcome to another edition of “The Diplomat’s Report.” It has been a long week and it’s not even half over. And while many of you are looking at the calendar and marveling at the fact that in a few days the fourth month of the year will be here. I’m thinking about how long of a year it has already been, despite the fact that we’re merely a third of the way through. Let me be clear, I’m not complaining. I’m not addicted to drugs, sex, or rock and roll and in need of an intervention. In fact, I omitted alcohol from my life this Lenten season to prove that I’m not addicted to alcohol. Mission accomplished. However, while I have nothing to complain about, my view that it has been a pretty long year thus far has been because of all the work I’ve been putting into redesigning myself. Yes, I’ve been doing a floor to ceiling remodeling of The Diplomatic Consulate and what a job it has been.

The past few months have been very enlightening for me. I made the decision to make some changes on the inside so that I may be a better person on the outside. Often times we focus on the physical changes; a lift, a tuck, a diet, or a new gym membership. While the physical changes present formidable challenges, they are nothing compared to the work that has to be done to change what’s on the inside. For most of my life, save a few years, I’ve been pretty fit so the idea of taking care of my body and eating right has never been a problem for me. However, while I’ve always taken the time to care for my physical body, I haven’t always been as dedicated to taking care of my spiritual and emotional body.

When something is wrong with our physical body, the body has a way of letting us know by way of physical manifestations: pain, smell, visual, etc. However, how do we know when we’re ailing spiritually? How do we know that it’s time for an emotional check-up? Herein lies the problem. Your body doesn’t typically cry out to you after a bad break up. Your ankles likely won’t swell after you’ve lost someone close to you. And your urine won’t smell like ammonia just because you’re a terrible person. No, that’s typically because you aren’t drinking enough water. Either that or you’re eating way too much asparagus, but I digress. The moral of the story is that it’s not as easy to tell when you’re hurting on the inside as it is when you’re hurting on the outside.

So many people walk around every day hurt, feeling like they have no shoulder to lean on, no arm to hold them and no ear to listen them. Many of these same people have more followers, friends and contacts than they know what to do with, but yet and still they wrestle with this emptiness alone. The fact is that mental health is a taboo subject, particularly in communities of color. If a man doesn’t exhibit normal outward manifestations of high levels of testosterone, we question his masculinity. If a woman cries or takes offense to something we may not necessarily consider to be offensive, we deem her to be “emotional”. And when people do things that we may not wholly and completely understand, we attribute it to mental instability. We, as a society, are hostile towards individuals with emotional handicaps or those who exhibit behaviors and outward manifestations of emotions that we don’t understand or identify with.

I readily admit that I was a terrible person growing up. I would not be surprised if there are individuals now in therapy or in need of therapy because of some of the terrible things I said and did to them as a child and an adolescent. My friends and I brought tears to the eyes of children and adults alike simply because we could. If we saw a weakness, we exploited it. We were like bulls in a china shop with reckless disregard for all the fancy stuff; primarily our victim’s emotional well-beings. Why did I do it? A number of reasons that I don’t have time to get into at the moment. But the short answer: I was a hurt person, hurting other people. Today, I’m older and wiser, and when I look back at some of the things I said and did to hurt people, I cringe. It makes me cringe to think of all the women I hurt because I was too selfish and inconsiderate to be in a relationship. It pains me to think about all the people I mentally abused because of their race, nationality or physical appearance. It sickens me to think that I saw someone in need and rather than extending my hand to help these people, I kicked them while they were down.

Everyone hurts. Anyone who tells you differently is hiding the hurt as they tell you that bold-face lie. Emotional hurt, like physical hurt, can worsen over time and may become irreparable, if not appropriately dealt with. As a friend of mine likes to say, “hurt people, hurt other people.” The little girl who was picked on throughout her childhood for not being very attractive but then grows up to be attractive and flaunt her beauty every chance she gets, is a hurt person hurting others. The man who had his heart broken by his first love, vows never to be hurt again and runs through women the way Adrian Peterson runs through defenders, is a hurt person hurting others. The boy who never knew his parents growing up and goes from pillar to post procreating but never starting a family of his own, is a hurt person. It’s a vicious cycle and until we stop and realize we have a problem we perpetuate it.

Everybody needs somebody, some time. That person may be a friend, a family member, a co-worker or a therapist but it has to be somebody. Someone has to help you through that hurt. Someone has to help you see that you’re not right and that until you are you’ll never be happy. Someone has to be there to help you heal the pain. We must not be afraid to reach out for help. If you’re hurting, tell someone. Hell, tell me if you want to. Seriously, I’d rather be inconvenienced now to save a life later and help someone in need.  

I hope all of you who are reading this pass to this on to your friends and family, whether you know their emotional state or not. You never know whose life you could be helping to turn around. Perhaps even your own. Until next time, Stay Up and Be Blessed! 

Losing Sucks

“I’ve dealt with my fair share of disappointments and despite their unpleasantness, I’m grateful for them. Adversity builds character and from my failures I’ve developed stepping stones to success. Life isn’t about the events that happen to us, it’s about how we respond. Respond like a Champion.” -The Diplomat

 

Greetings folks and welcome to another edition of “The Diplomat’s Report.” I hate losing. As much as I love winning, I may hate losing more. Losing, to me, feels like a horse kicking me in the stomach. Losing tastes like garbage, draped in vomit, peppered with horseradish and manure. Losing feels like the flu, a stomach virus and acute, explosive diarrhea combined. If I had to sum it up in a word, losing “sucks”. Yet and still it’s a valuable and necessary part of life.

I’ve always been hyper-competitive. While I have 4 siblings (3 brothers, 1 sister), I grew up with my two brothers closest to me in age; my older brother by 7 years and my younger brother by 14 months. In essence, I grew up like a middle child always feeling a need to prove myself. I felt a need to prove myself worthy of the attention that my younger sibling received and to be as strong and smart, if not stronger and smarter, than my older brother. Life was a constant struggle. My early childhood involved me trying to impose my will on my younger brother while being met with a stiff reproach by my older brother. I spent many afternoons fighting both brothers…at the same damn time. My older brother did his best not to hurt me while simultaneously reminding me that he has was the older brother and that he was the boss. However, I did my best to unseat him from his throne and show him that I didn’t give a damn. My attempts, though energetic, forceful and seemingly unrelenting, were futile.

Despite my lack of success in these battles with my older brother, I learned some very valuable lessons: that I need to fight for what I want and that I should never give up. I also learned that no one could beat by behind like he did, except my 6 foot 3 inch nearly 300 pound father, so I did not have to ever acquiesce to anyone other than those 2 people. This courage served me well at school, in the neighborhood, in sports and in competition. Unfortunately, one of the things I didn’t take from those early beatings was how to deal with failure. This probably happened because, to me, when I lost to my big brother, I wasn’t failing; I was succeeding at showing him that I wouldn’t back down and that I was just as strong and tough as he was. So when I worked hard and performed well but my hard work didn’t result in a victory, often times I was shattered.

Losing is difficult for me to understand because I was taught that if I work hard, train hard and prepare harder than everyone else, success is inevitable. How, then, could anyone explain my lack of success at times when I had executed the formula to perfection, double checked it and demonstrated that perfection in all my work? I witnessed others try and fail, but they weren’t me. I believed that I was the best and that, as such, I should never lose. However, my mother taught me, and it eventually set in, that no one wins all the time. She taught me that sometimes, even when I’m the best, I won’t always come out on top; but, that shouldn’t stop me from trying to be the best. That was a hard lesson to learn and one that I’m still digesting today; yet, it’s something that I’ve never forgotten. This lesson taught me to work hard, train hard and make any race, competition or decision between me and anyone else an easy one to result in my favor.

I work hard to be the best in everything that I do in hopes of winning and being the best, and not taking second. I work the long hours, consume the immense amounts of caffeine and push the bounds of my limitations because of my desire to excel. When the outcome doesn’t match my preparation, it’s often difficult for me to reconcile.

Over time, I’ve been able to rationalize not being crowned the winner every time I feel like I should have. I’ve been able to accept coming in somewhere less than first place. But what I have never accepted is losing. Losing sucks. When I’ve taken the moments to look back over my life, my successes and my failures, I realized that I’ve learned more from my failures than I have my successes. While success feels good, looks good and sounds good, there is no better teacher than failure. Failure teaches you what not to do in the future so as to avoid this inner turmoil that occurs when you come up short. Failure teaches you all the ways to NOT be successful.

No matter how rich or poor you may have started in life. No matter how educated or uneducated your parents may have been and no matter your race, religion, gender or ethnicity, adversity is a common denominator for us all. We all will encounter losing, we all will fail, and we all will be derailed. More important than our encounters with these events will be our response to them. Since these moments in life are inevitable we must learn from them. Since we know that it will rain during the rainy season and snow in New York during the winter, what do we do? What lessons do we garner from the heartache, heartbreak and storms that life brings our way?

The challenges we face in life don’t just occur so that we have a story to tell, but so that we have a lesson to learn. Take the time to see obstacles for what they are: building blocks to success and opportunities for greatness; for greatness lies in overcoming obstacles. No one who is successful has gotten to that level by taking the easy route. The easy route is crowded and full of people who decide to take the path of least resistance to get to a place very few get to; success. However, the road to success is scarcely populated and full of challenges, obstacles and people who welcome adversity rather than run away. We can only become stronger by experiencing a constant tearing down and rebuilding of ourselves.

Losing sucks; I know. It hurts, it smells, it tastes bad and we would rather do without it. But since we have to deal with it, we may as well learn from it. Rather than focusing on the things we can’t control--the hurricanes, the tornadoes, the snowstorms, death, financial loss and heartbreak-we should focus on the things we can control-- our response to those less than desirable moments. How you respond and what you do in the face of adversity will define you and your life. You have two options: you can respond lying down and choose to stay there because it hurts too much to get up, or you can stand up and respond like a champion. The choice is yours. Choose wisely. Stay Up and Be Blessed!

The Role Model Dilemma

Role model- A person whose behavior, example, or success is or can be emulated by others, especially by younger people.

Greetings folks and welcome to another edition of “The Diplomat’s Report.” The past few weeks have been really busy, exciting and tiring. Between work, travel and trying to take over the world, I’ve been working harder than a fat man’s pacemaker. I came really close to not penning a post this week. However, there are a lot of you who are avid readers of the blog so I made the time to make it happen. Hopefully you won’t be disappointed. This week we’re talking about role models.

In 1993, National Basketball Association Hall of Fame player Charles Barkley stated in an interview, “I’m not paid to be a role model. I’m paid to wreak havoc on the basketball court.” At the time, Barkley was a highly talented, highly paid and highly visible professional athlete.  Consequently, his statement set off a firestorm across the country and led to a national conversation about role models between everyone from newspaper columnists, celebrities and parents about whether athletes are and should be role models. In sharp contrast to Barkley’s sentiments was NBA Hall of Famer and then Utah Jazz star Power Forward, Karl Malone. In a column that appeared in Sports Illustrated, Malone wrote, “Charles...I don't think it's your decision to make. We don't choose to be role models, we are chosen. Our only choice is whether to be a good role model or a bad one.” Is Charles Barkley a role model? Should we look to athletes and entertainers as examples by which to pattern our lives? Or should we just admire their athletic prowess or unique talent and find a role model elsewhere?

Athletes and entertainers do not always get to dictate when the lights and cameras come on and go off so they must always be on their best behavior or suffer the consequences and repercussions of their actions. Is this fair? Yes, I believe it is. When Peyton Manning and Beyonce sign lucrative endorsement deals they agree to be the face of a particular brand or product. It’s understood that when Pepsi, Papa John’s, or any number of the companies that they have partnered with, hired them that they would be on their best behavior. There’s a reason why the average Joe or Mary doesn’t get lucrative offers to endorse products. Celebrities, implicitly and often explicitly, agree to be on their best behavior and be held to a higher standard than others. It follows the old adage, “To whom much is given, much is required.”

In my humble opinion I think we lack role models. When I was young and it was time to go outside and play, my friends and I would pretend to be our favorite athletes. One of my favorite football players was Barry Sanders so when it came time to play football in the neighborhood, he is whom I pretended to be. For every sport there was a different athlete and in many cases, many different ones to choose from. It’s easy to turn on the television or get on the internet to find an example of a shot or move you’d like to mimic in a game or a match. However, what if you aren’t athletically inclined? Well there are always Rick Ross, Maroon 5 and Nikki Minaj videos to practice rapping, singing and dancing. But what if you can’t sing, dance, write, rap or run 40 yards in under 5 seconds? If LeBron James and Dwyane Wade only serve as “role models” for what to do and not to do on the basketball court, who do you emulate if you don’t want to be a basketball player?

If you’re from a low socio-economic neighborhood, it’s likely that you have very few positive examples of what success looks like. Even those of you whom didn’t grow up in an economically depressed neighborhood may have lacked a close relationship with a doctor, lawyer, engineer or entrepreneur, but it’s more likely that you didn’t. Those who do not have a close positive example of success are drawn to the closest one they can find. If this example isn’t in the home it’s either on the street or on television, both of which often tend to be poor sources for role models. However, good or bad these examples may be, they are still role models.

I agree with Karl Malone, you don’t get to choose whether or not you will serve as a role model. The person who makes that decision is the fan, the follower, the young and the impressionable. My role models never filled out an application to be my role model. They were my role models because they were whom I chose to pattern my life after. My parents, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Michael Jordan and Jay Z, just to name a few, had no say so in the matter. I chose them and I didn’t need their consent, signature or acknowledgment. Young people find their role models anywhere they can.

While society may look down upon gang members and drug dealers, to their admirers, these are the closest or only examples of success and therefore serve as role models. We can’t rightfully tell a person not to admire the rap artist with the gaudy jewelry and nice cars, or the neighborhood hustler who always has a pocket full of cash and not provide an adequate alternative. We can’t praise the hustle and the financial gains garnered from the hustle and then put down the hustler. While Bill Gates and Warren Buffet may be many people’s model of success, the neighborhood drug lord, rap artist or star athlete is a model for others. It’s hypocritical of society to tell a young person not to admire a gang member, drug dealer or rap artist and not replace that example with a better one. To discourage one form of “success” without a tangible example of the alternative is an exercise in futility.

Whether we want to be or not we are role models and we must govern ourselves accordingly. My parents always warned me to be careful what I said and did at all times because people were always watching whether I saw them or not. Just as my role models had no say so in the matter of whether they would serve as my role model, I know that I have no vote in whether some child, youth, or young adult will choose me to be their role model. I understand that as an African-American with two degrees, no arrest record, no STD and a modest level of success, that I can be chosen at any time and never get the call that I’ve been drafted. As such, I live each day like someone is watching and handle each moment like it may be recorded for others to see. While at times this may be a heavy load to shoulder, I accept it.

In conclusion, I no longer think we’re at a loss for role models. I just think we need more people to realize that they are role models and to act accordingly. Until next time, Stay Up and Be Blessed!

Praying for a Bentley

“I like big stuff and I cannot lie.”-The Diplomat

Greetings folks and welcome to another edition of “The Diplomat’s Report.” If you’re like me and the rest of the country, you’re probably suffering through this recession and are worried about the hit you’re going to take as a result of Congress’ inability to do the one job we pay them to do, govern. Stay calm, breathe and try not to do anything rash like sending threatening messages to your congressman or start selling drugs because you love “The Wire” and “Breaking Bad.” None of those are good ideas. Sending disgruntled letters to your congressman stating how they’ll be in the unemployment line come next election if they don’t get their stuff together is a much better option.  

Aside from hoping and praying that Congress has an epiphany and solves our economic crisis, you’ve probably been praying for a million dollars, a new car and a new house or something very similar. This is normal. Most of us, except those in the millionaire and billionaire tax brackets, are consistently praying for something bigger and better than what we currently have. I call it the “Praying for a Bentley Syndrome.”

We wake up and pray every day that God will bless us with a Bentley in hopes that it will solve all of our problems. And don’t get stuck on the actual car being a Bentley. It could be a Maserati, Aston Martin, a Benz or a Bimmer. Actually, the prayer isn’t even about cars. The Bentley is a euphemism for material gain and a financial windfall. And again, there’s nothing wrong with hoping, expecting, praying or working towards a greater and more secure financial situation. However, there is a problem with believing that all of your problems will be solved just because there are more 0’s in your bank account; lest we not forget the hip-hop axiom spoken by Prophet Biggie Smalls, “Mo money, mo problems.” Money doesn’t eliminate your problems, it just gives you a different type of problem. When you come into money you have to hire a financial planner, possibly some security to keep the wolves at bay and a new phone number to hide from all the new found family. While you may no longer be ignoring phone calls from Sallie Mae and Visa, you’ll likely be dodging phone calls from Auntie Mae and LaVisa.

I caution you about putting all of your hopes and dreams on “Praying for a Bentley” and suggest that you put your energy and effort into appreciating the things that you have. If you’re always looking past what’s right in front of your face you’ll never be content and you miss the blessings that may be lying right in your lap. We need to appreciate the Honda before we can expect a Bentley. Most of us are taught to ride a bike with training wheels because trying to learn without them will lead to way more pain than we’d like to endure. The training wheels give us the opportunity to learn with as little chance as possible of hurting ourselves. They allow us to train and ride with a safety net before we hit the open road or the trail with a mountain bike.

The majority of instant millionaires are broke or dead within a couple of years of attaining their wealth. Becoming instantly rich is much like learning to ride a bike without training wheels. Sure there’s a chance you’ll work it out without landing face first on the pavement; however, the odds aren’t in your favor. It’s a quick fix and, most times, the quick fix isn’t the best fix; in fact, it usually isn’t a fix at all. The struggle, the bumps, the bruises, and the falls are what teach us what to do with the success at the end of the tunnel. After you’ve fallen a few times you know how to stay on the bike.

Adversity builds character. Every obstacle is an opportunity for us to realize our greatness and to be better than we were before. Because you’ve been knocked down, you’ve learned how to stay up and that falling isn’t the end of the story. There is absolutely nothing wrong with praying for a Bentley but while you’re sending up that prayer be sure to appreciate the Hyundai in the driveway. Until next time, Stay Up and Be Blessed!