Thug Life
“They want us to be a piece shit so that the poor people kill the poor people, the rich people get paid off of selling the poor people dreams about being rich.” - Tupac
If you’ve listened to Kendrick Lamar’s album “To Pimp a Butterfly” you’ve probably heard the source of the above quote. In the song “Mortal Man” Tupac says “Cause once you turn 30 it’s like they take the heart and soul out of a man. Out of a black man, in this country. And you don’t wanna fight no more.” These quotes are taken from an interview on the 1994 Swedish-radio show, “The Soul Music Show,” where in my opinion, Pac comes off as a prophet.
Last year I remembered the outrage the murders of i…
Man's Search For Obstacles
Welcome to my monthly book review. Every month I'll discuss and give my review on the books I’ve read. I'd like it if you read along so we can have a discussion about the books. I'm hoping someone will put me on to something I missed.
This month, I finished Ryan Holiday's "The Obstacle is The Way," and Viktor Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning."
“The Obstacle is The Way” provides a record of history's greats and their achievements in spite of obstacles.
There are so many good quotes in there that I lit up my e-reader with highlights. The first is a Holiday quote in which he includes a quote from Benjamin Franklin. It reads, "When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teach…
Upward View
For a good portion of my adolescence, I was very combative. In junior high school I was always getting into fights, so much so that my father had enough and sent me to live in Jamaica for a year. In Jamaica I saw how difficult life was for my mom and vowed to not fight again—wanting to help her live a better life, I didn’t believe fighting all the time would help in that goal. As I’m writing this article, I can’t recall getting into any fights since I returned from Jamaica at age fourteen—I’ll be thirty-five in a little over a month.
I don’t claim to be a saint. While I haven’t physically gotten into fights, I have gotten into many verbal altercations. Surprisingly, none of them have led to any physical violence. But the v…