I understand focusing on what you envision until it becomes the reality.
This isn’t that saying, “Fake it until you make it.” Rather, it is, “Believe it until you see it.”
Yes. Faith.
Your mind is stronger than you at first realize. This could mainly be due to many things around you trying to break it down.
Perhaps why I have always been fascinated with why people do what they do, I have always needed understanding as to the drawing cause, deducing, if even logical at all, one’s actions as justified or the contrary.
To me, aside from how to fix things or innovations, whether artistic or mechanic, in manner of behavior, the how did someone do something belongs to those who want to imitate or emulate another.
I have always felt myself to be a trendsetter, either by chance due to my found circumstances or when deliberate, to not follow those I see as set non-examples- those to never become.
The what is simple. Even in its most complex ways, the product or byproduct of a creation can be observed. We can see the outcome of one’s doing just as much as we can generally visualize the becoming of one’s plans from already set creations.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out the kitchen. This saying goes along with what Papa said following a case made public on the news we watched, “If you are somewhere you are not supposed to be and something happens to you, it’s your fault.”
I understood and got that message. Why you would be somewhere in the first place was your controlled, purely accountable decision.
My heart, my mind, my body, and my spirit, while I find not so forgiving for malice, are all still driven to always ask why to this day.
Helping myself to understand why people do or did things has trained me to discipline myself on how to view the world and its people- why I should never see myself doing the same or be inspired to similarly become.
I observed early.
Something told me long ago that I was not made to be steadily walking the path of my found surroundings.
While I made good in all that was given me, I personally felt within me, I had the responsibility to be better than my circumstance.
Maybe I took Papa’s words deeper than he would have anticipated.
It would be my fault to have found myself somewhere I should have never been.
I only heard of Papa’s successes- having had a dormitory, a bakery, and a gas station at one time. These all being before my time in memory or birth.
I was instead within my parents’ years of challenges and struggles.
In me, I knew we, as a family, were not winning.
The pains I saw in those around me who suffered from losing and losing again seemed as if they were beginning to self-prophesy their destinies.
The crab mentality of family members who took it upon one another to take each other down, perhaps subconsciously and thus, not intentionally, expressing the desire to hold each other from making it out, fearing to be left behind- painful.
People not pursuing higher levels of education or business endeavors, marriages falling apart, families being divided and destroyed- all happening before my young eyes, orchestrated by family members suggesting to provide help and advice.
It was disheartening to hear disappointments spoken, ironically comforting one another through each other’s downfalls, no one acknowledging to the need for admittance of not knowing how to help each other climb up and out of miseries or whether they were helping at all.
That pity party served well and in continuation, one hard time after another.
Even when out, crabs walk sideways, with only hopes to hit water while visually uncertain.
I began to immensely fear taking the same risk, frying under the sun, if I followed the same.
I needed to be the one to prove, once out, walking straight ahead and forward could be done.
While even so young, strangely enough, I can still recall already feeling so behind with time just running out and not stopping.
In me, I felt I had to do something or I would find myself following the same hardships and struggles I saw around.
I worked after school to maintain life in school- enjoying numbers in Academy of Finance, debates in Mock Trial, and Socratic seminars in Humanities while trying to stay up with integrated math, juggling two jobs at times even while cheering at games during my senior year.
Believing I was preparing myself to go somewhere had to be constantly driven by constant movement forward. Stopping, now I know, scared me.
Mama living off of Papa’s disability while coming home and seeing my siblings just about, I found the trickery in my mind to suggest the ultimate.
I could not afford to lose.
It was like when Dwayne Johnson said something of the matter of always thinking your back being against the wall. There is no turning back in such circumstance- You have to keep moving forward.
Denzel Washington has said, “Fall forward.”
Breathe. Relax. Let go.
Keep falling forward.
I was doing these things before the internet and eventually, social media, even granted immediate access to such helpful testimonies of people’s mindsets.
Some would say that I have been fortunate to have a husband who thought futuristically, ahead with plans to prosper, pushing through as the first college graduate in his lineage with a computer science degree.
Indeed. I look at my husband and know I had chosen well from the moment I heard him speak his future plans he presented for us before I even agreed to meet him for a date.
He had already included me in that plan and the plan was solid. I believed him and his words, already showed by his actions, as I still continue to believe in him each day we progress together.
My own thoughts always felt he was part of my spiritual feeling of following my forward path. I ended a two-year relationship in high school with one who never understood why.
I didn’t have an answer then, but just went with a gut feeling that I would not become the best of me if I were to continue under his plans of taking a year off before starting college.
That resting mentality scared me, I realize now.
How could I keep pushing my heart, mind, body, and spirit with a mentality of one who had every financial support and opportunity to start a life in college soon after high school, but would then choose to not take it?
I couldn’t afford to lose. I couldn’t be around those taking the chance.
I had to keep moving forward.
I could not take risk in being anchored.
I had to surround myself with those who held and exemplified this understanding.
I am grateful to this day of surrounding myself with what I now know as having had winning mentalities.
In junior high, I found myself around girls who were raised innocently, taking pride in having good mannerism and self-respect.
While I laugh and smile about the balance we found in staying sweet before the eyes of our fathers, I can reminisce of times we were able to still safely tamper with silliness at school dances and bus rides to downtown to each free us from being prudishly stiff-necked.
In my classrooms, in high school, I had amazing minds around me who, like me, fearlessly questioned the world around us.
With so much struggles at home, I could escape at school, listening to endless possibilities instead, seeing the livelihood of others who lived on the better side of our communities.
My classmates around me were testimonies to my possibilities. They were my angels in disguise to not just quietly direct me, but inspire and support me along the way.
I played the fictional character, Jasmine, for my strength, while quietly knowing those who knew me in junior high, remember me to have worn soles that “talked” because they flipped open when I walked, to clothes handed down to me that I resewed to my “newness” before I started working at a local grocery store right before high school.
Those who remember those days should recall me more as the Aladdin (Okay. With a slightly higher mean-streak for resilience) in the rough.
I surrounded myself with winners and so, I ended up with one. A wonderful, amazing one who is determined with me to keep helping and inspiring young minds around us to do the same.
And, so, while my husband trains those around him to win, I, perhaps, pass on to suggest my personal ultimate, “See yourself as one who can’t afford to lose.”
You were made to win.
Believe it until you see it.
