I’ve heard people talk about their high school years as though it were the golden age of perfection. My mother would say to me,”Enjoy those [high school] days. I had some good, clean fun. You’re going to miss them when they go.” Being young, I heard her but those words didn’t resonate until much later on. I didn’t quite get it.
Looking back, I have come to cherish my high school days very fondly. I miss being carefree, throwing caution to the wind. We were ready to try new things and showed great compassion for others. We reverberated basic, inalienable principles available to all humans: compassion, love, and respect.
I’d like to think that we embodied all that was right in the world, or I at least feel like we did. There was little to no racial issues, although such things lurked outside of our school walls. We were free to explore, be who we were (unaware of judgments placed upon us).
Things were much simpler then. The biggest worry during my time in school was appearance and girls (the perpetual cycle). No bills. No kids. No real responsibilities.
High school represents the hope for tomorrow; the way the country should be. Maybe my 18-year-old self (and his cohorts) knew a thing or two about what the country should aspire to be. Those friends that I had back then, many are doing world-changing things in their fields. It gives me hope that the things that we have learned collectively can be spread abroad in the world.
My hat goes off to us then and now.
Until Next Time,
Love & Peace
just a man, I can fall back on the many fallacies of being “just” a man.
I find that life is cyclical. Maybe there was something that had to happen, a lesson that had to be learned or an impart of wisdom. After that exchange occurred, alas, the dance was over (and with it, the friendship). There’s nothing wrong with reminiscing on the good times of the last dance. The problem is continuing to dance after the music has stopped and your partner has left. That makes you look, well, crazy. I’m not sure that’s what was meant by the expression, “dance as if nobody’s watching.”
Through this relinquishing of wills, you allow someone else to lead for a while. You may step on each other’s feet, but that’s normal. Do you keep dancing? Certainly. But do you keep dancing seeing as though the song has long since ended? If you’re enjoying the company, you will. If you’re not [enjoying it], you can feel like you’re in limbo, like a staring contest: you’re just waiting out the other person to see if they will blink [stop dancing] first. Sometimes, we put ourselves through that agony, but for what? So we can prove that we were the better friend? To prove that we lasted until the end? That we have endurance? We can sum this up in one word: loyalty. Lemme tell you that loyalty will cause you to endure hardship, sometimes to your own detriment. I’m at an expert level when it comes to doing things in the name of loyalty; even if it’s been self-inflicted.
Happiness. Happiness is the only word I can use to describe that night. For a split second at the airport (en route to Charlotte), I thought, “Is this totally crazy? Like, what gives you the right? This is just a little crazy.” Nevertheless, I went.
Recently, a dear friend named Arthur was opening a new studio named 
