05/21/2024
I grew up reading about heroes and victims.
What I have learned, through experience and ponderance, is that we all become what we feed. We truly do become what we most desire. That is a double-edged sword, though. The subconscious is a powerful thing.
In my years of battling alcoholism, financial ruin, and total addiction to self-destruction I realized that nobody cares. Most just want to watch the train wreck. Trying to reconcile who I was with who people wanted me to be, and who I thought I was supposed to be.
I f*cked up my whole life because I fed the cycle of self-destruction. I desired to stay in the loop. I fed the desire. I didn't feed the hope. I fed the coward that would fight any man in the bar but wouldn't fight to save his one life.
I really was an obnoxious clown. I had to always top myself with the crazy stupid s**t I did. I was angry. Very very angry. Most of all, I was angry at being born. The affliction/gift debate goes back and forth in my mind at all times. Why did I have to be born? Why did I have to be born the way that I am? Why did I have to be born into the family I was? Why did I have to be misdiagnosed? Why did I have to be pumped full of meds? Why did I have to be betrayed in the worst ways by the people closest to me and that I cared about the most? Why did the market have to crash? It felt like an endless spiral of misery and despair, and I fed it with every stupid decision and every suicidal choice. I chose to be the victim.
Today, I don't even associate with that man anymore. It took years to clear my head of all the meds they had me on. Some of the withdrawals almost killed me. Not gonna lie. I chose to be the hero in my own life, and I wasn't going to let anything stop me.
Prison was unfortunate. I literally had to fight for my life more times than I can count, but I learned what I was capable of. In the midst of the fights and trips to the hole, I helped 36 guys get their hisets. High School Equivalency. Teaching decimals, fractions, and American History with fat lips, swollen cheek bones, and missing teeth. Many of them from the same gangs that were jumping me.
I learned that adversity is everywhere and in everything. There is adversity in every single choice we make. Adversity is ultimately inevitable. I began to see adversity as the ultimate wisdom. I had 3 choices to make, the way I saw it, and all 3 were affliction or gift?
Was my brain an affliction or gift?
Was my life an affliction or gift?
Was suffering, in life, an affliction or a gift?
In my ponderance I came across a paradox it took a long time to solve..
What could any autonomous consciousness truly know or comprehend about righteousness without first having witnessed and experienced all manner of unrighteousness?
Perhaps the adversity was meant to move me in a certain direction? I couldn't rule that out. Perhaps the afflictions, perceived or otherwise, were each one a class of their own and I was the student. And while chomping away at that bread, the experience became wisdom in and of itself.
I learned that there is nothing more spiritual or heroic than being real; being genuine. Kindness is the essence of life. If I was going to choose life, well then how was I going to live it? Heroically and spiritually. And the Peaceful Savage was born.
Love ya faces. 🖖🏾
