Some Call Me “The Gangster of Love”

For some time now,  I have struggled with this aspect of my personality that I now know to be called “The Challenger“.  Into my twenties, I didn’t question this dimension of my being.  Somehow, I had been aware of my right to be me for as long as I could remember. Therefore I would assert it whenever someone tried to express otherwise.  Like my enneagram said, I do not like being controlled and will go to great lengths not to be.  For example I was once told by some boys from another neighborhood that if I came to their neighborhood they would jump me.  Since I had no reason to go to their neighborhood, at first their threat was meaningless to me, but then one of my friends moved to that neighborhood and asked me to visit her.  Remembering what the boys had said, I weighed my options.  I decided that I would just rather be beat up than to feel like I could not go where I chose to go.  Just the thought that they felt like they had the right to tell me that I could not go there embroiled me so I decided to walk down the middle of the street through the neighborhood just so that I could know for myself that my fear wasn’t making me stay home.

Now let me make it clear that I did not want to fight or get beat up. And if I could have honestly told myself that not going to her house was my choice, I may not have even gone, but for the person I was at the time, the only way that I could sense my freedom was to just go there and make myself visible.  On my way to my friend’s house, no one even saw me.  I thanked God and hung out with my friend for a little while.  She actually was surprised that I even came.  She knew the threats that had been made.  I told her why I had to come and she told me I was crazy. After some time I decided to go home. As I turned the corner from her building, I saw several of the boys who threatened me.  At first I paused.  She asked, “What are you going to do?”  I said, “I’m going home,” and proceeded to walk toward the boys.  When they saw me they were shocked.  The “ring leader” so to speak, ran up to me and said “I thought I told you that we would jump you if you came out here.”  I reminded him that he was in fact correct and then proceeded to walk around him to make my way home.” He pushed me from behind a few times and said something that I chose to ignore. Several other boys chimed in as well, but I kept walking.  They followed me yelling some junk as I kept walking home. That was the end of it.

That trait was dominant in my life for a long time and is still there, but now I keep it in check–which is tough sometimes. One of the things my enneagram said was because of this trait I may sometimes endanger others who choose to hang around me, but do not have the same capacity to deal with what comes at them.  So I don’t check it as a form of suppression but more so to enable me to create more thoughtful expressions that consider others who might be effected by my challenging nature.  At first trying to do this just pissed me off, but now I have just come to see it as a greater challenge. The fact is that I am convinced that as long as I am not setting out to hurt anyone, I have the right and, may even venture to say, the obligation to fully express myself in this world.  As far as I can tell, it is the only way to know who I am and consequently the person God is creating through me.  Now does expressing myself mean disrespecting other’s right to express themselves. No, of course not.  In fact, I agree with Marianne Williamson or Nelson Mandela or whoever said that when we shine our light we give other people permission to do the same.  So that is what I am trying to do.

What I see in the world right now is a deficit of people taking the chance on loving themselves and putting themselves out there.  I don’t know how many people are out there bottling up their true selves for the sake of the approval of a few.  If you’re one of those people, don’t you think that you are robbing yourself of you and as a result robbing the world of your gift? One of you may be able to solve one of the many global crises that we have created, you may be able to lead a just government, or at a minimum, you could make your home or workplace better if you just step out.  Love yourself and then give that love to the world.  Too many of us are punking out because we don’t want to look stupid or because we are afraid of what people will think.  If that is you, just ask yourself, why are you afraid of the opinions of people who are afraid to even express themselves to an audience of one?  You could do more for them and the world if you accept that you are do not have to be dependent on their love or approval.

Blah blah blah yackity smackity.  There’s no need to say anything else.  I know you know  what I mean so get to know yourself and become a:

Gangster of Love.

Everything Has A Purpose

Sometime ago, I adopted the mindset that absolutely everything has a purpose.  I determined that there is nothing that is that “should not be” in and of itself.  I accepted that context and usefulness determine the value of things to people.  From that point of view, it is possible to live a life of constant discovery.  Upon this platform our minds can create a use for almost everything.  The banana bread is a perfect example.  When I looked in the fridge and saw bananas that looked like this:

Heartburn waiting to happen

my first thought was how it was just another symbol of the wastefulness I was feeling after getting sucked into a Steven Seagal-thon for 6 hours.  I just felt dirty.  No offense Steven.  But then I remembered that I could change my mind about what these bananas symbolized.  They were still good for something.  They did not have to go to waste if I was willing to put in the work.  And so even though the laziness factor was trying to talk me out of it by telling me how late it was, I made use of my resonant Steven Seagal vibrations to psychically karate chop that weakness in me and turned those mushy bananas into this:

Deliciousness wins the day

As I pushed myself to grab all of the ingredients and look online for a recipe, I felt myself getting energized.  My mind engaged and it became a holistic experience.  As I loosely followed two different recipes, I began thinking of how much my daughter would enjoy the banana bread.  She loves it when my wife makes it and I figured I could do just as well. Mashing the bananas, I thought about all of the brown bananas my grandma gave me as a child and laughed.  Why didn’t she ever make banana bread I wondered.  Flour, eggs, milk, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and melted butter joined the bananas in the mixing bowl.  I stir and stir until I feel like I have the right consistency. Cooking is chemistry I realize.  I buttered the loaf pan and poured in  the mixture.  I become consciously aware of how amazing it is that we can bake in glass cookware.  The process that makes glass strong enough to cook with is called tempering. I think of how interesting that is and look up the process and discover that it is created by negotiating a balance of internal stresses.  Hmmm.  Very interesting.  By balancing internal stresses, glass that was once weak, becomes stronger.  I wonder if the same process works on people. The heat is on.  Heat and time are the final contributions to the banana bread. Two hours later, we’re eating it. It’s as delicious as it looks. The purpose of my work is fulfilled.  But not only that,  I’m fulfilled.  I’m stronger.  Maybe I’ve been tempered.  Prior to taking action on baking the bread, my internal stresses were all out of balance.  But when I let go of my disappointment in how I spent the greater part of my day and decided to use the negative energy for good, the creative nature of the Universe was able to fill in the space and use every part of the day to make something both useful and delicious.  New context, new insights.