"Pardon me, Brother. As you stand in your glory, I hope you don’t mind if I tell the whole story." - Curtis Mayfield
Jail was always seen as a place where troubled people go to rehabilitate their lives or live with the consequences of their actions for the rest of their lives. I had grown up in an environment where you always avoided prison, but if you went in and accepted the sentence, it was seen as a badge of honor. So it leads me to wonder...
What are we aiming for?
I'm a year away from earning my MBA degree, but none of this gets accomplished without understanding where life could've gone. I learned from the streets as much as I learned from school. I learned to survive and thrive at the same time. I learned from the people as much as the pages.
Because ultimately, we all wanted the same things: Peace, Innocence, Money and Power.
I chose academics, entertainment and politics as a way of getting what I needed. Some chose criminal enterprise. Our stories are the same, but the outcome is different. Some pursue criminal enterprise and become a multi-billion dollar business mogul. Some choose school and still go to prison.
There's lightness and darkness in the ghetto.
To understand the people, you need to see both so that the image makes sense.
You just gotta live to see it through...