What Does it Take?

We are shaped by our environment, our societal status, our heritage, our socio economic place, our opportunities and some luck, our beliefs and experiences. The human soul yet resilient can be damaged and changed with powers outside of ourselves and sometimes cannot be healed or restored.

Why are armies fallen in a battle when single survivors carry with them the protection of over a thousand battles escaped or survived, with no ending ever guaranteed?

Psyche is easily tainted, disturbed, mangled, eaten alive, born to be self destructibe, traumatized and is haunted by deeds of others. Man’s inhumanity toward man.

Positivity must be amplified ten fold on any negative damage. Our psyches lose the ability to stand up for ourselves or fight only after a little beat down. Our psyches believe we must deserve what we get.

With Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs, it would seem quite normal and possible for our lives to be stunted or thwarted or even unrealized if our prime and innate needs aren’t met. Can we become our complete selfs with only parts of a whole? Food, warmth shelter is a basic need but education and belonging are also. Not being fed or clothed or warm doesn’t require a need to seek education or belong for any reason but survival. Each level the needs become more specific and inner reaching. Spirituality, creative pursuits, wisdom and inner peace and understanding can’t be fully obtained when each day is a test of fortitude, strength, resourcefulness to survive.

What is needed to be born into poverty and oppression with all odds against you? What if you were never equal or valued or trusted or believed in? What special ingredients must be present to actually realize your full potential? Is it family, faith, perseverance, gift from God, the practice of enduring suffering or blessings abundant? To grow up with the only way to survive is to learn the streets, the ugliness, the hustles that keep you in fear of the police and for your life. Learning to trust know one, get what you need by any means possible, to live by the knife or gun. To use each moment like it could be your last. To dare not dream of dreams belonging to others. To process injustice and anger and hopelessness while holding on to every ugly truth long enough to avoid long periods of time incarcerated or eventual death and to verbalize your story and your witness in a beautiful melodic way.

To speak or shout what has driven you and brought you to another place where the gates are open to you, not keeping you out. And not having to prove to the world anything, just share your story with those who really understand and care and rally behind your fight. You accept your reign and own it with the pride of a survivor. You have gone so hard so long but still nurture a life inside your broken heart and carried with a broken back the burden of the horrific truth.

What does it take? Why does the abundant fruit of injustice not turn bitter? To have a story to share but not let it be stripped from you like a badge of honor that you earned? Do the stars shine especially bright for those who have truly suffered? Is resilience in all life trials and disappointments the vitamin for survival? Does faith in the lord and all the promises in the scriptures feed our spirits and souls to believe that all bad must come to an end? Why does it seem to take so long? Why is your vision so clear from fear of looking away while those fooled by the wrong direction’s blinding light are clouded from the seeing the horizon and infiniteness?

Why isn’t anger and sheer will to live the fuel that fires our lives?

Would that fuel overcome the rest and send it to a pile of ashes?

So many men have fallen by the blows of life and spirit and give in to a fate they can only see. What does it take to do what few can do against all odds that are specifically for you? To be brave enough to let your tears and scars to be the shimmering light and the road map to your life. To know what is fake and to have exercised great thought and contemplation to expressing a private view that reverberates a common sad story of a whole race of people perpetrated for centuries. Too succeed when it was never believed to be possible? To wash away the rot and refuse to uncover the delicate life below, thriving and flourishing? And to discover all it even though you’ve been told lies about its existence. Lies to blind you and keep your reality smothered in submission. To be mislead into self hatred and non validation but rise with talent and insights not ever present in your cruel filled adversaries? To know you’ll never matter to many but forge ahead to benefit others that walk in your shoes. It’s not fame or fortune but more likely the miracle of it all, imagine that!

Did you know your worn broken paths would lead you to paths of splendor and calm? Did you know those keeping you down couldn’t keep you down ling enough to cease your passions and fire. Your life long self affirmations and demands from mothers that you have power and energy unique to yourself and not to follow suit with giving in or giving up or settling for lowering your standards you hold yourself to. How can you trust in something invisible when there’s never been anything to trust but sorrow? Can you feel what can’t be seen, heard, tasted, proven to be? What makes it so?

Does it take special super powers within us all, but only summoned and mastered by a few, the ones least likely to conjure it up in the amazement of all? How was it that you’ve actualized? What does it take?