Trade
My Blues
When
I was a little boy I wanted to be a race car driver like Al Unser Jr. I wanted to be filthy right so that I could
buy a mansion with sixty rooms so all of my family could live there. We’d have three big hotel kitchens and a huge
backyard with a pool and a race track.
When
I was a little bit older, I wanted to be a doctor/policeman so I could heal
people, rescue kittens and lock up the bad guys. (Never imagined that I’d be one of the bad
guys.) I’d drive a Porsche and have lots
of girlfriends. Life would be good.
As
a teenager, I wanted to be an All-Pro NFL QB/HB/WR/Free Safety and a
rapper. The football was because I was
good at it, the rap because I wanted to tell my story. All of it would make me rich, but my sports
cars became Cadillacs with candy paint.
I was going to show the world how we do it down South.
By
my eighteenth birthday, I’d smoked away so much of my ambition, drank and
squandered my hopes, dreams and scholarships, and one-night-standed my hurt
into a constant state of mistrust.
Sports required too much energy, and I could rap my behind off, so well
that somebody would find me and offer
me a record deal. So I kicked back, fired up blunts, slept with
my gorgeous woman as I could and watched life pass me by in a cannabis
saturated daze, resentment brewing below the surface, the oppressive clouds of
higher expectations hanging over my head like pregnant thunderheads. And when lightning struck, thunder cracked
and the afterbirth of failure rained down on me. I didn’t even seek cover. I just sat there, wet and high, wishing I was
somebody else, anybody but me.
Life
continued like that for years, perpetual storm clouds hovering, smothering any
budding hope, the floods of failure swimming around me, licking at my chin, threatening
to drown me, threatening to extinguish the ever burning, ever present blunt between
my lips and make me surrender to my
awful reality. Between the inside outs
of jail, my inability to stay faithful to any woman in my life, my drug
dependency, I would have gladly traded places with someone else because I felt
that I was ruined, a lost cause. My kids
deserved better, my mom deserved better, my wife and my girlfriends deserved better and all I felt was that I deserved to die, to be at peace.
You
know, it’s sad . . . my kids are and have been the brightest thing in my life
since their births, but with the exception of them, the brightest thing about
me had become the orange ember flaring at the tip of my latest blunt. I really wanted to be a chef or a zoologist,
anything working with food or animals, but those people didn’t get rich and it
was all about the money, wasn’t it?
After
seven long years in prison, more than
my fair share of trials and tribulations, ups and downs, spiritual highs and
emotional catastrophes, I don’t dream the way I used to. I still dream often, but it is the quality of
my dreams that is different. No more are
the dreams of mansions, Italian cars, super stardom or any such
foolishness. I don’t ever dream of being
someone else. I tried to imagine what it
would be like to be Jay-Z, the money, the status, the beautiful wife . . . but
those are his dreams from his journey. None of that moves me anymore. Just the thought of trading my life for
someone else’s seems absurd.
Now
I understand what Maya Angelou meant, “Wouldn’t Give Nothin for My Journey
Now: This Is My life.” I cannot undo the past, but I can make the
most of the present and stride proudly into my future.
Even
with my struggles, my circumstances, the odds against me, I do not wish for a
shortcut or an easy way out, because this
is my journey. I must go through
this as I climb towards greatness. No
longer am I in the shadows of hustlers, thugs and dope dealers. No, my aspirations will leave me in the
presence of the Kings, X’s, Kennedys and
Lincolns.
It’s
a hard journey, but now I’m wise enough to know that this journey is part of
who I am to become, it strengthens the power of my fight to righteousness, it
glorifies the mercy and goodness of God, it proves that God will bring you up
from the lowest of the low and use you for good. I will touch and inspire a great many people
because of who I’ve become, of who I’m becoming. I may never rush for or pass for 200 yards
and score four touchdowns in front of a stadium of people, I may not ever take
the checkered flag at Indy, I may never rock a sold out arena of screaming
fans, but I will stand before many crowds and tell of my journey . . .
sometimes I’ll cry, sometimes I’ll shout, sometimes I’ll laugh, console, hug,
pray with . . . but I’ll always reach and reach and reach because only my arms
can touch them. I am God’s tool.
My journey . . . yeah, my journey is
priceless, my struggles are my struggles, my stories are my stories. No, I wouldn’t trade my blues or my simple
dreams of fishing, spending time with my kids, or cutting my lawn. I am who I am because of my journey, and I wouldn’t trade my blues.
Lesson
#40
“If we wall threw our problems in a pile and saw
everyone else’s, we’d grab our back.”
Lesson
#13
“Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all
about.”
Regina
Brett
Author
of The Plain Dealer
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