Are you still asking for permission?
Is there some magical gatekeeper telling you that you can’t write that book? That you’re not talented enough? That you cant create a successful Youtube channel because your life is not interesting enough?
That you cant live the life that you want because their “NO” is more powerful than your “YES”…
Let’s talk about why you feel like you are so powerless in this digital world filled with possibility. There was a time when I felt like everything that I accomplished, that everything that I wanted to accomplish was tied to someone else saying “YES”.
Tied to someone else giving me permission to be…
I believe that society has brainwashed us with images for so long that we easily lose site of the fact that we are all just human. There are no superhumans among us, yet me see actors and musicians on awards shows, tv shows and movie screens and we immediately deem them subhuman, or superhuman.
Better than just just…human.
When I was younger, I wanted to be a published author. That was a goal that I set for myself at a very early age. Thing is, I didn’t know what that even looked like. What it entailed. What I knew for sure was that a published author was someone had a book sitting on a shelf at a bookstore. A published author was someone who sat in the basement of Borders on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. (RIP to Borders books) Read excerpts from his book and sold signed copies afterwards.
Yeah…that was a published author!
Sometimes we accomplish our goals and we don’t even realize it.
I have a quick story
But before I go too deep into it, you can check out this blog post in video form here:
Back on purpose.
While I was pursing this goal of becoming an author, I was also part of this online poetry group called Timbooktu @www.timbooktu.com.
This website is still active I’m sure. Shout out to Memphis Vaughn who created this site so many years ago. I was fresh out of the Army and definitely looking to move in the opposite direction of anything that resembled that type of authority.
We were enthusiastic, revolutionary poets living “woke” long before the word became such a popular idiom. It’s like hip hop before gangster rap if you know what I mean.
Anyway…
The more into this group I became, the less I wanted to write a fiction novel about love like Eric Jerome Dickey. I wanted to write poetry. Of course this was during the grassroots of slam poetry and open mics as we know it today. We didn’t have camera phones or mics or lighting or video editing software. When you wanted to be heard, you just walked up to the mic, either with the words in your head or on a piece of paper, sometimes with music, sometimes without, and you just spoke your truth ALOUD.
I’ll tell you this…
There is nothing more terrifying and exhilarating than getting on a mic in front of a crowd of people, speaking your truths, your thoughts.
So anyway
I was working downtown Chicago at Loyola University doing admin work in their General Counsel’s office. There was an open mic thing going on at the borders store on 900 N Michigan (old Border’s flagship store), just a couple blocks away.
So when the time came I punched out for lunch went to the basement of the borders store and signed up. I was the only black person there. The person in front of me was a young Asian woman. She was so freaked out while reading her poem that her voice was a low, trembling whisper. I mean even with a mic you could barely hear her. Keep in mind that aside from reading aloud in high school I had never stood alone at a podium before an audience.
I started to doubt myself a little. Mainly because I didn’t think that anyone would feel my work because it was about freedom and reparations, etc, etc…I mean how could they, none of them were black.
Anyway, my time came and I got up there, cleared my throat and in that moment I realized that this was not def poetry, and I was not the great slam poet who I adored, Saul Williams.
Linking his poem cherished poem Coded Language so that you can understand the magnitude on the moment.
Thank me later…
This video will help you understand the gap between what you see, and what is.
Anyway…
I read my poem before a standing room only crowd and when I finished I looked out amongst the faces of shocked white people, most of whom, from their expressions felt as if I was attacking them personally.
I guess I was in a sense, but it wasn’t about them it was about me and what I felt at the time. So when I was done it was total silence for at least 10 seconds. Lucky for me, this one white guy who was performing next began clapping loudly, and before you know it, the room was full of applause.
I walked back to work just charged with electric energy. It was something that I will never forget. The moment, the silence, the white guy, the Japanese girl. It’s all apart of me now.
So fast forward.
From that experience I totally stopped writing my fiction novel and began working on a poetry book. It took about a year. When it was done, I took all the money that I could manage, along with money from a couple of friends who helped, and I self-published my first book of poetry.
I didn’t realize at the time that I was accomplishing the lifelong dream of becoming a published author because I didn’t feel like one. The royalty checks were not what I thought a published author should receive. I couldn’t even pay my smallest bill with those checks.
It took me years to realize that the dreams that we set out to accomplish don’t always look the way that we envision them. It also helped me to realize that my expectations will not always resemble my reality. So when you talk to the universe and ask for what you want, be mindful that when you do receive the gift, it may look very different than the vision that you have in your head.
I wanted to share that message with you because many times we lack gratitude simply because our gifts are not packaged the way that we expected them to arrive. Let’s say that you want a smart, caring beautiful woman to come into your life.
Absolutely!!!
But will you recognize her when you see her? Or do you see a beautiful women and THEN hope that she is smart and caring? You see we let our eyes lead us so much more than our hearts. But there is deceit in the eyes. A person can have the most caring smile in the world, but it doesn’t make them a caring person and it doesn’t make them smart.
See what I mean?
I spent a lot of time believing that I wasn’t a published author because the publishing companies that I sent my work to rejected it. Even the ones who showed interest eventually passed on my work. So I published it myself but didn’t give myself or my work the credit it deserved because the universe did not give it to me in a way that resembled the image that I created for my expectation.
So with this knowledge take a fresh look at your life, your situations, the things around you, with eyes of gratitude. You may realize that you have done so much more than you realize. That some of your dreams have already come to fruition, only we are not grateful for the victory because what we are truly seeking is the validation from others. That, and money.
Bob Marley said. “Money is numbers and numbers never end. If it takes money to be happy, your search for happiness will never end.”
In the same vane George Bernard Shaw said, “Lack of money is the source of all evil.”
I believe that they both were right.
I’m BT Bonner
I want to thank you for watching the video, or listening or reading.
I’ll see you next time…Peace
Peace
BT
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