Raising The Level Of The Company You Keep

My facebook friend's list is extensive. There are very few 'friends' I haven't met in person. Oddly, I tend to run into those people after friending them on FB. It is truly collection of people I have met through my extensive travels.

In my younger days, I would have tried to hang with as many of those friends. As an adult, with a much stronger commitment to my priorities, I know that is not a great idea. Better than that, it's a horrible idea.

When I was younger I just liked the energy of being around different people. It didn't matter what kind of energy it was as long as I felt it. That has led me on an interesting journey. Today, I am more focused. The direction I head in is much more important. My 'friends' are all headed in a good direction. Everyone is not headed in MY direction. Even if you are on my level, or above, if you're not going my way, your energy could be a distraction to me. I have enough distractions.

Then there is the question of being on my level.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In organizations/groups/social circles the only way to be on the same level is to lower one's standards. We tend to get caught up in the big fish small pond scenario. We stand out when we hang out with smaller people. We forget that we are stuck in the small pond with big dreams. My realization came in the midst of being compared to someone I considered a low-life. I had been a genius among morons when I knew my genius is much greater than
that. I am a man among men. I stand out in any crowd. It's worth it for me to pursue crowds of higher standards since I know I will continue to stand out.

In real estate, a good buy is the worst house in a good neighborhood. Some of us make the bad buy of the best house in a bad neighborhood. In the good neighborhood, the property values will continue to rise in the short term. In the bad neighborhood, the values will drop and may never rise, even in the long term...



Check your neighborhood.

My journey has taken me to the lowest of lows. I thrived. I have thrived in the middle. As I continue my forward and upward momentum, I continue to thrive. However, my momentum has slowed as I have tried to raise up people around me at the expense of my own progress and at the expense of their progress as well. By not moving on, I was blocking the way for
people around me to follow my path.

To be specific, I fell for the "book smart vs street smart" bullshit so many people came up with when threatened by my intelligence. To put people at ease, I lowered myself. I even ventured out to become "street smart." At the end of That journey, being "street smart" is really dumb. Or, at least, the way I went about it was. Almost as dumb as joining a gang. I became affiliated with criminals.

It was when my affiliations with other intellectuals became threatened when I noticed that I had weakened myself to essentially fit in...

The worst part of lowering one's self is not the loss of identity or lack of growth. It's the cost to the community at large. In addition to losing friends/associations, my community lost a leader for great while. I see the effects of my disappearance all over. In my family, in the family I was meant to build. In my community. In my nation. In so many places I see the my world missing out on its potential because I have been missing out on mine. Even now that I am rebuilding so many pieces of my life, I still have so much more work to do because of the work I didn't do when I was being less than me.

And I see this all over in so many areas. The tendency is to lower one's self to match the company we have instead of finding new company. By halting our own growth we are validating the stagnation of the people around us. The saddest part is saying we believe in abundance and growth and not allowing our own self to grow. Our world won't grow if we don't.

So I commit myself to growth so whole hearted that many associations will pass away to make room for new company. I'll get out of my own way so that the people around me can grow on their own. Don't worry! I'll leave plenty of bread crumbs and detailed notes along the way.

I'm just going where I should be so that my family, my community, my nation and my country can go where they will be as well.

It's time to break some cycles...

Word of The Day - Retard

This word is one you already know. It's just one of my favorites

Retarded

Did you know it's OK to say retarded when referring to a person of limited mental abilities? It's also OK to call someone retarded (even to their face!). You can be extra P.C. and add mentally to the front if you like.

It's not OK to say Retard or Tard. As is - Hey Retard! Or - I looked like a tard in that picture. Bad form guys. Poor form.

But think. Being retarded is one of the few things a person will always admit to if he really is in fact retarded. Truly dumb people will never admit to being dumb. A real idiot will never call himself that. A retard will say he is retarded day in and day out.

Brilliant!


...or will he/she? Maybe there are retards trying to live like ordinary people...

NIggahs (Updated)

This is the one. Even though I am in the process of deleting friends, this will make some people just jump ship on their own.
I wanted to post the actual news footage on here but here is the link:

Here is a quick recap. A black boy in some part of America got into some kind of disagreement with his white teacher. The white teacher then told the boy to go sit down, niggah NOT nigger, but niggah. There was definite distinction made between the two words and both agree that is was niggah not nigger. The white teacher says the black boy called him niggah first. It is likely but there was no one around to verify whether the boy said that or not. The boy denies it.

I know you know where I am going with this. What you may not know is my position on this subject.
Let me start out by saying that I am sick and dead dog tired of this topic. What sickens me most is that so-called intellectuals get hung up on this subject. Carter Woodson spent his entire epilogue explaining why the names we use are the least important to our progress. I have had friends argue that the internalization of derogatory terms that brings us down. But we internalize the term ourselves and we bring our selves down. But that is a divergent train of thought. Back to the main topic.

I’m sure everyone has seen parodies of the white guy who gets beat up for saying niggah around black people. I’m sure some of us have been in the real life situation. I have to say that I don’t care. I have only ever been called nigger once. It was by an old black woman. I have been called niggah millions of times by virtually all of my friends. It’s no reason to call the NAACP.

I see many millionaires on TV who most likely can’t read. Call the NAACP for that. I decided long ago that we would never be able to stop Black people from using niggah. Therefore, I just dont care if another race uses that word. Jews don’t go around calling each other kikes or whatever. No other race does that. Its just insanity! Don’t we have better things to do.

By the way the boy was lying. He called his teacher niggah first. And the whole community gets behind THIS boy. I can’t get behind a liar.

I hope the link works and I hope yall get a new perspective. The teacher was very eloquent in his defense of his use of the word. Holler at me yall. I want some dialogue but I want to see and end to this discussion.


[Comments]

the link doesn't work and i'm being lazy, so based soley on your blog from what I gather, yes the teacher was dead wrong. i try not to assume people's meanings in the things they say or do so I honestly have no opinion on the fact that Teacher used a form of the "nigg(er)/(ah)" term but I feel he was wrong to call the child out of his name period. he's the teacher. he's here to set an example and be the bigger person; teach lessons through his own actions. that being said though and aside from the "racial" factor, sometimes with kids, you have to flip the situation on them and make them walk in the tennis shoes that they themselves lace up for other people by doing to them what they do, for lesson's sake. so they know and understand how it feels. i don't know the details of this story and i'm certainly not justifying the teacher for saying what he said, i was just pointing out the bold print for the hell of it now as for the term and who gets to say it - i could care less. i say it. i say it all the time. in my personal Ceballos Dictionary, Tami L. Edition, it is a term for one person or persons, regardless of color or race and i 've always used it as such. it only bothers me when people outside my black heritage says it and means it derrogitorily (hey this word is also in my dictionary) for a fact, and is purposely demeaning my race. I'll check the link at some point and be back.…

Good answer. You are right about teachers being responsible. I was talking about the uproar over the word. The link mot working is probably why people haven't been responding. Sorry

checked the link. my first reaction without giving too much thought (to avoid a tangent) is the hoopla over it all is dumb. the teacher's response is good enough for me, whether he's just using that as a crutch to not make the intent of matters as bad as some may view it. in particular, i'm referring to him saying that he hears NIGGA/(s) all the time in the hall. i'm big on folks being a product of their environment and learning from example and classic conditioning. if you hear a song over and over again, you learn the words. if you are put in a foreign country, even if for needing to be there for years, being surrounded by only their language, you pick it up; you learn it; you adapt to how certain terms and phrases are used and what tones they are used in. call me dumb, but to me this is the same thing. the man hears it all the time, you don't expect him to slip, though i don't think it was that he slipped in this particular case, but he mentioned using the term before. he says he said it back in retaliation, so to speak because i don't recall right now the phrase he used exactly when explaining saying whatever to the kid, and if so, i don't care. see original comment. some kids need to experience what they dish...but the kid says he didn't use the term...kids lie especially when they want someone in trouble. notice at the end he wasn't big enough to say, "...apology accepted," he said that he thinks the teacher deserves not to work there anymore and i'm sorry but it seemed like he said more like a naner naner naner, i got you fired for saying that to me sort of thing. i may be wrong, but it was how i felt after watching that bit. anywho j, your point was the uproar and once again i've talked too much. the uproar to me was overrated.

amen and i agree with you. once again, people are worried about the wrong damn thing. worry about the starving children around the corner or the economy, not the white man's use of a word we use ourselves every day. Even though I don't feel there is always a distinction between nigger and nigga when someone of another race uses it, it was obvious to me from watching the clip that the teacher was trying to prove a point, and was not totally out of line. Granted, he is a teacher and should never call a student a name, but I bet otherwise that smart-ass kid wouldn't have sat down - so the teacher got his attention and people want to jump on the bandwagon to have him strung up by his toenails now. doesn't make any sense. i wonder if the teacher had been black if they would have just laughed it off?

[2010 Update]
This was before the Al Sharpton “Death Of The N Word”. You know that I now fully embrace the word and will use it freely and descriptively as often as possible. In fact, I wish the teacher had used it in a bad way. I would be on his side still. Niggardom is completely unacceptable. I hate label children but this was three years ago the kid’s grown now. That kid was a nigger. He deserved more than to be called niggah by his teacher. I truly wish we could all get past this word. The only way to do so comes from eradicating niggardom first. Let’s get to work!