What do you do when you outgrow someone? Firstly, how do you know you’ve outgrown them? I think it would become painfully obvious because you and that person would no longer see eye to eye. You’d no longer share interests or goals. There’d be no desire to support the other in the pursuit of those goals…
What do you do? I know you’d find a way to tell them how you feel. But do you stop talking to them? Do you walk away? What do you do when you’re the other person? When you find that you’ve outgrown yourself…
Do you sever all ties with the person you once were? Well, in my case, the person I’ve become is a direct result of the person I used to be. The places I’ve been, things I’ve seen and done. They’re the bricks that make up my foundation, the database I draw from. I’m the new definition of the term “Living Buddha”.
I’ll be 57 this year. I’m a black man. Meaning I’ve not only survived 25 years in America once, I did it twice! I’ve done it while living in the worst environments. Using and dealing drugs, living by the gun, sleeping in bullpens and fighting for phone time. They say we’re supposed to let go of these things. They hold us back. I don’t believe them. To me each brick houses a beautiful, priceless gem inside.
Turn my back on the people and places where I came from… Never!
Cause without them I am nothing, I accept the good, bad and the ugly..
Without these things I can not help myself nor my people to grow or heal.
So I reject them, they’ve been horribly wrong about everything else.
They say, “art imitates life”… WRONG!
Art does not imitate life. Everything on this planet is a created thing. A made thing, so everything is a work of art. Therefore art is life, and I am not just an artist. I am the ARTIST…
I am a bringer of life…
I am “NEXT”!
Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash