I was asked and honored to be interviewed and highlighted on the website Black Man Can . Make sure you check out the article with me being featured in its League of Extraordinary Black Men and you can also see any of my other interviews and shows in my brand new Media Section.

There are times in our life where we become delusional to what the truth is.  We want so much to for things to be the way we envision it to be that we neglect to realize what is really going on. Many times we love to live our lives with the ideal of ignorance being bliss. We ALL want to believe that everything is the way we wish it to be BUT what happens when evidence or facts teach us that it is not that way at all?

The Wire in my eyes is arguably the best series to ever come on television. The show provided so many life lessons and motifs using the city of Baltimore’s drug trade and law enforcement as a backdrop. There are so many quotes from the show that have implicit life lessons in them. Let’s take Marlo Stanfield one of the drug kingpins on the series. Marlo on one episode  is confronted by a security guard attempting to keep him from stealing some dum dum suckers from the convenience store. Marlo steps up to him and says repeatedly “You want it to be one way.” When the security guard asks him what is he talking about Marlo finally says “You want it to be one way. But it’s the other way.” Marlo would walk away and later he would have a hit put out on the security guard for disrespecting him.

The security guard on the show knew who Marlo was and his capabilities in the neighborhood. The security guard wanted to try to chin check Marlo some because he wanted things to be the way he wanted them to be.  When it reality he didn’t fully understand that things were not the way he thought they were. He could have let Marlo walk out with the two dum dum suckers and went home to his family but he wanted to try things his way instead of recognizing the situation for what it was. I am not condoning the idea of the security guard being killed but the idea that he knew the rules of the street and decided to push against it was his downfall. He really wanted to be a security guard and do his job that bad over some dum dum suckers knowing that the man taking them was the biggest most dangerous drug dealer in Baltimore?

There are times where we have to survey the situation and understand that some times the way we think things  are really are just a figment of our imagination. We then  have to ask ourselves the correct way we can go about the situation do we act it head on or do we find an alternative route around our issue or problem. We are all born into certain situations be it good or bad but it’s what we do with those situations and recognizing the positives and negatives of them that will help us the most. I talked about it in an earlier post a bit that I will expound on again soon “Life is like a Dice Game”. What are you going to do if you see the dice are not going your way? Are you going to continue betting the same way or betting on the high risk bets because you feel things are your way? The one thing I have learned in my journey is more than likely things are the other way and the faster you are able to recognize that you will be able to see the path in front of you clearer.

We can only operate in the flux of ignorance being bliss for so long. For instance we can only neglect to realize that our lady or man is really unhappy within the relationship, realize that our parenting is not what our child needs, realize the true schematics of our career and job situation,  etc. We can only believe for so long and thinking things are really one way. We all need to be more cognizant what is going on in front of us instead of wishing or being delusional to what is sitting squarely in front of us.

People all the time say when certain things happen to them and they didn’t know where it came from and they were in total shock about what happened. This maybe true but there are many times we see the writing on the wall. We know that their maybe something wrong with a child but we act surprised at the parent/teachers conference that Johnny is acting a jackass in middle school. Men and women know that their mate is unhappy deep inside but they don’t want to recognize what’s in front of them and refuse to evolve within the relationship and then they are shocked that they are cheated on or the person leaves them. People see that some of our communities are not in proper shape but then we are surprised when those situations produce certain types of people We go into our careers understanding the format of our job but we feel we are alright and things at the company will always be alright when all the signs around you are showing you that this company is folding in six months and you will be without a job.

We all come to a point to like Marlo said we believe something is one way but realize that it is really another way. The question is will it be too late when we come to this empathy or will we be “dead” like the security guard because we realized it too late

Related articles

• How Idris Elba Proves That “Cool’ Is More Important Than “Swag” (verysmartbrothas.com)
• Wanna Know Why You Are So Damn MISERABLE? It’s Because You Have SUCKER-ASS Friends (thisisyourconscience.com)
• Do You Need Passion to Profit Online? (smartpassiveincome.com)
• LeBron James, The Media, and The Perception Of Black Males In America (singleblackmale.org)
• Urban Male Chronicles: What Are We Supposed to Do? What Are We Supposed to Say? (singleblackmale.org)