#4: RAGE.
I walked around for a long time.
With the rage just moments away from exploding from within.
I lived my life as the one people watched out for.
The one they were worried about and had to make excuses for.
We as a culture uphold rage and the need to prove oneself.
Some barbarian, unnecessary appendage from the evolutionary process...
This thing that we thought we needed to survive but now, it serves no purpose.
Our minds and resources have developed so consistently and with such leaps and bounds.
Yet, I chose that path.
I walked that road.
It's all I had seen, it's all I was taught!
I remember this outcry.
A weak, unhelpful and underwhelming excuse for behavior that I look back on with a portion of shame and with a greater portion still of accountability and freedom.
Those chains that imprinted on my very being.
I thought I would never be free.
I saw red...
Time and time again.
I believed that was the only answer and that no matter what I did, I would never find a better way.
It took me a long time to realize that the answer was there all along.
All I had to was ask.
I had to reach.
I had to beg.
I had to humble myself.
We don't often think about the impact our actions have...
On our community, on our family, and on our relationships.
We are a notoriously selfish generation.
Of a notoriously selfish species.
From the very start of time, we were conditioned to look out for ourselves.
Do everything we could to preserve the bloodline.
Rage. Fight. Kill. Destroy.
These barbaric practices.
At the time, they made sense and once context is brought to each instance of it's modern existence, we tend to justify and reason.
Can we ever truly reason... when we are the ones in control of the present.
Of the now.
How long will we wait...
To be different.
Be bold.
Be strong.
Be men.
Have a conversation.
Work towards something greater.
Something more...
Than barbarity and rage.
It's my choice.
And I choose... Hope.
Rage, you had your time. You are no longer welcome here.
Your by-products, passion and anger remain to remind me of the protection and beauty I must preserve but you, my friend, can see yourself out.
Yours faithfully,
SQJ.
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