Some benefits of getting older.

“Jeff hit me up with a twit said what you waiting on? When you gon drop that next [blog] __ you takin long!”

I’ve heard it said that as you get older you start to worry less about what people do. I’m starting to realize how true that is. I spend far less time concerning myself with the little plays people are running around me. I don't want to be at the line of scrimmage adjusting my plans like Peyton Manning. I am tending to focus more on what I’m going to do, rather than what people have done and are doing.

Not too long ago, as my office has been influx. I asked one of the guys that had been around here for the longest what the key to his success is? With people leaving left and right, people worrying about their jobs and contracts etc. After we had finished talking about fishing and about how much I understand my dad and his friends desire to go fishing so often differently now that I’m a father. He told me”….well you know Reg, I just keep a level head. I don’t get too excited about whatever happens. And I give em what they want. When they change their mind and want something different, I just give it em to the way they want it.” Thanks John.

When you are younger you seem to be less aware of the limitations of your locus of control. By that I mean you can only control so much of what goes on around you and what happens to you. What’s yours to control is your response to those happenings.

But this isn’t about what you do, as much as it about what you shouldn’t do; worry. Not to say that you shouldn’t be proactive and create realities but the things that we tend to worry about are usually beyond our control.

And those things we can’t control often come at the intersections of our faith.

But that’s what faith is all about:
• Believing that the things we cannot control are under God’s control.
• Knowing that they will ultimately work out for our betterment.

A little story about me.

A little story about me.
Back in 1999 one of my close friends put me on to one of the latest hip hop albums: 2001. This album came out a full two years before its moniker and my friend had an early copy as it had yet to hit the college circuit. Well a few months later while working on one the hardest courses of my colligate career (digital systems II) One of my buddies in the grad lab had his speakers and win amp blasting and one of the songs came on.

Being that the album was new I found myself in the unique position of being the only one in the lab that had heard the album.

Well it was a hot album and being such I had placed this recording in heavy rotation. When one of the tightest cuts on the album came on in the playlist I could not front and act like I hadn’t heard it. As much as I tried to pretend when the now infamous line sung by Nate Dogg came on I had to chime in right with him…..

“Hold up, heeeey...get ready for the next episode, Heey aay yee yay…..” well you know the rest.

When I sang that line it struck a chord in one of my teammates mind and she made this statement that has stuck with me ever since and it’s the reason I write this blog today. As innocent as it was at the time, I looked at it one way and I see it differently as I have grown. Heather looked up at me soon after I quoted Kurupt and Nate and said:

“For a preacher you sure know a lot of rap songs!”
My two other cohorts Toya and Osei nodded and agreed.

Now at this time I was only two or so years into having accepted my calling. This statement spoke to the notion that we all had of a preacher that didn’t quite Jive with me listening to and singing Dr. Dre’s latest album. And it is a notion that I struggled with for years after.

But now I am a little bit older and a tad bit wiser. I have come to realize that for me to have pretended to not know or have heard “the next episode" before and even more to pretend that I didn’t enjoy the song, would’ve been to deny my own personhood. Also it would have confirmed a certain dualism that far too many suffer from.

Any dualism of self is unhealthy in my estimation.

You see your understanding of self frames your world. Dualism is rampant among my people. We all have an understanding of the degree self that is one way here and another there. A self that can laughs at something in one setting but shuns the very same notion in another setting. A work self and a home self. A self that is this way with this group of friends and another with the other group of friend. This kind of schizophrenia is unhealthy

I admit I did struggle with that kind of dualism in my personality and public persona….somewhere around my first year of seminary and the birth of my daughter I made the decision to stop any forms of denial of my true self altogether. Not that I have arrived and or did so by myself. Now for the last several years one of the most anticipated albums since then has been the detox album. I guess it helps that I have a president that is a Jay-z fan, along with the CIO of my organization.

The bottom line is it is easier to be comfortable with who you are than trying to be what you think people expect you to be.

7 things that the college age kid needs to know about going to College.

Inspired by the fb statuses of one of my little cousins going off to college this week, I wrote this blog. I almost wrote something a few weeks ago when I learned that another cousin had been accepted, enrolled and changed her mind. That along with two other family members in this age ranges that have made some interesting recent choices regarding college would’ve been negative re-enforcement. So I’m glad Byanca’s excitement gave me renewed interest in writing ‘7 things that the college age kid needs to know about going to College.’

1. Go.

You would think this is a no-brainer, but it’s not. So many get discouraged and have a little fear. Believe it or not it’s normal. Anyone that tells you’re they’re not a little afraid of leaving the comfort, security and familiarity of their home aren’t living in reality. Now I know you’re excited and couldn’t wait to get away from Mom and Dad, but you are out in the real world, well at least the junior league. You need to simmer down some of that excitement. Then there are a few that are apprehensive and overly anxious. The key to both extremes is to just be careful and you’ll be alright, but …..GO!

2. Stay.

One of the most famous lines from college orientations since the dawn of time… “Look to your left, now look to your right…one of the three of you won’t make it to the end of freshman year.” And it’s true, but it doesn’t have to be you. Or your two friends/dorm mates that you made sure to sit next to in orientation. It could be the three losers sitting in the back row. But no really, there will come many possible reasons for you to consider going home and never coming back. Money, bad grades, horrible roommates, bad weather, theft, lack of transportation, bad accommodations etc. All of this might hit you in the first day the first semester or on a weekly basis. But you have to stick with it. The truth is it’ll all be worth it, and you’ll learn to adjust. Which leads me to my next point?

3. It’s all about survival skills.

My friend Lex made the point to me a long time ago, and it stuck with me, besides the specialized careers skills you gain, college is about learning survival skills. What she was saying is that you may never remember the quadratic equation, how to evaluate limits, how to go from state machine to binary numbers to algorithm to code, to bread board or how not to split infinitives (won’t stop you from blogging) but if you can figure out how to survive from the 10th of the month till the 30th on less than 30 dollars and still make the grade you will have learned one of the most important lessons.

4. Forge Lifelong relationships.

I can tell you the truth; I thought my homies from high school couldn’t get any tighter. I worried about the fact that we were going to different campuses and some not to school at all. But what happened? My friends from college have become the deepest personal relationships that I have. I only spent 4 months at FAMU, but it seems just like yesterday. People that have heard me talk about it know I tend to wax poetic. And when I came to Howard I met some of the coolest, smartest, people ever. Far too many to mention. Nothing forges friendships like hours in a computer lab sweating through lines of code. (Shhhhh! I’m trying to write Bridgit!) I cannot stress how important this time and these people were and still are in my life.

5. Don’t be fresh meat.

It’s been my experience that the more you advise people(read girls) against this point, the more they run to it. So just try not to be it. Ask a sophomore or Junior what this is if you don’t already know.

6. Prioritize.

I know you can stay up till 3 and get up at 7:50 for a class that starts at 8:10, but just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I know there is a party going on 8 days out of the week (don’t ask me how, but it’s possible) but that doesn’t mean you should go to 5 out of 8 em. Just because there are employment opportunities available doesn’t mean you should work 20-40 hours a week. (Wish I would’ve listen to that one while I was in school.) Spending every waking hour with your girlfriend(s)/boyfriend(s) is possible but boy will that cut into those 4 hours of study for every 1 hour of class time. My Niece and Nephew watched me squander away my first 3 years at Howard picking them and my girlfriend up almost every weekend. Lord I hope they learned from watching their uncle’s mistakes rather than having to walk in my footsteps. The point is you are in school to learn, everything else has to follow in prioritization. Don’t learn #2 the hard way.

7. This will be the best part of your life (to date.)

Although life can and does get better (Hey, I hear 40’s the new 20) this will have been the best time of your life to date. You know no real responsibility; you have no debt, hopefully no children and no cynicism. Enjoy it….by enrolling in college.

But you know some of these lessons we must learn the hard way. Don’t let #7 be one of the hard learned lessons. It’s a lot harder to get into college at 28, 38 and 48 than it is at 18.

You don’t have anything to prove

That’s right.

Now don’t get me wrong, a show of skill, smarts, style, accomplishment and power isn’t the same as having something to prove they all may be a side effect of doing work or of a feeling that you have something to prove. The difference is the place of motivation. When you have something to prove to some family member or some ‘so called’ friend, or just people from your past it equals an anchor holding you back in your past. Whatever caused this feeling whether it is somebody or some situation it isn’t going to let you go.

People can’t let you go from having something to prove because they don’t really have the hold on you. The event or situation that makes you feel like you have something to prove can't let you go because situations and events only have the power to hold you back as they reside in your mind. The biggest thing that makes you feel like you have something to prove is in your mind. That feeling, that you have something to prove won’t be let go until you make up in your mind to do so. Trying to prove yourself to be “Blank” has caused a greater waste of hours, money, debt, frustration, and misdirected goals than we could count.

How many outfits, cars, degrees, homes, phone numbers, girlfriends, boyfriends, friends, children, promotions, have you collected in pursuit of proving yourself to someone? While nothing is wrong with having any of these things, something is wrong with getting all of this stuff to prove that you are something.
Nothing can do more for you than what you can do for yourself by moving on in your heart, mind and spirit.

New Year? Do the impossible.

On New Year’s Day, my family and I were headed to Grandma’s house for a weekend visit.
Packing suitcases and cars for even a three day visit can be challenging. Trying to get on the road for this five hour trip for us has always been a battle, even more so now with three children. My oldest child is six years old, and I like to challenge him. I think boys need constant challenging to keep them striving to be better and to fight back complacency. So I told my son, “When you’re finished brushing your hair take you and your sister’s suit case, along with your little brother’s and put them in the car. I was changing the baby’s diaper and had my back turned so I failed to see that once he finished brushing his hair, there he was in the upstairs hallway trying to mange taking both suit cases down the stairs…..(I wish I had let him finish because wound up leaving his and his sisters clothes right there)

His mom said boy leave those suit cases alone. I laughed and told him I was joking. His mom didn’t find it as funny as I did. I told him that I was only joking with him. I asked him “What were you going to do once you got downstairs (three flights) and made It to the door?” ‘I was going to put them down and open the door.’ “Well ok then”, I further prodded, “once you got outside to the car what would you have done?” ‘I was going to put the suitcases down and come inside and ask you for the keys.’

What struck me most about this episode was my son’s eagerness to accomplish this task. He was willing to try to do something he had never done before in his life. Although he’s only seen it done before, even though he is too short, not strong enough and not old enough and just poorly equipped to accomplish the task he took the assignment without flinching. He was ready and willing even if he was unable, that counts for a lot.

So don’t get upset when someone who seems to you totally un-prepared and un- equipped to handle the job shows. It’s been said that 99% of success is just showing up, I think at least half of the remaining one percent is being willing to do whatever is required.
And the next time someone asks you to do something you think is impossible for you to accomplish, remember that [you] with God all things are possible!