Keep My Spirit Alive
Kanye' West
As you can see, the little guy throwing his arm around the bigger little guy is me and my uncle Leonard.. Yea, I knew he had bunny ears behind my head, but the little guy looked up to his then uncle Len!
I chose this picture because to look back at that version of myself naturally brings back a rush of memories, as well as questions..
At whatever age I may have been then, I know for a fact that he held things down as much as he possibly could, with what he knew.
Pictures may speak a thousand words, but they only cover one aspect of life, and although I had a number of special days, many of them didn't equal a Great America experience!
If I had to guess, I'd say I was probably about seven or eight years old then. At that age, I had began riding a big boy bike, had been told a few years prior that Santa Claus wasn't real, and I probably could've rolled up for my stepfather as many times as I had watched him separate weed on Marvin Gaye's Album Cover.. All in all, the little guy in the picture was pretty innocent, he'd just happened to have a hustler for a stepdad!
This way of seeing things could come off as abstract to the average person, being that one body is all we have, but as it's written when I was a child I moved as a child moved, but as I grew up, I left childhood behind, to paraphrase! So is it out of order for me to visit who I left behind!?
Lebron recently starred in a commercial in which his now self, visited his younger self. Amazing how they put them both together, but his younger self asked him was he ready to go pro, to which he answered you'll just have to find out, very similar concept!
The little man that once was me did all he could to get the now me prepared to join the fight.. in between there was another version or two, which played significant parts, but the one who began the race is who I'm focused on. He was the one who initiated us with his imagination, and belief at an early age of who we would become.
The boy that held onto his uncle did so because his uncle exemplified manhood. He was by no means perfect, but he did carry himself as a man. That was the one thing that I've always been clear on, no matter how much I may have struggled in other areas of life, I was born a man and I'd do everything I could to fulfill that role.
As of about 2017 up until now, I've been working to make good on some unspoken promises to my younger self. As it was said earlier, he was the visionary that desired to do some of the works that I've been able to manifest. Realizing that I owed a debt to not let his dreams be buried with hopefully, the much older version of us. I understand it to be my responsibility to hold him down, the same way he did for his future self. Although, some of the things that I still strive to make manifest, some of which that are past due.. I charge that to the younger adult me that got distracted along his path.
In closing, I challenge everyone reading this blog to find a picture of yourself as a kid around this age, younger, or older. Whichever version that you can remember held your dreams, and see if they were carried on or are laying dormant. As long as we live we have the opportunity to make it happen. What we have inside of us is a gift that is meant to be shared with the Creation. We owe it to each other, because we owe it to ourselves!
Keep your spirit alive!