Friday night, mom dukes called me to be motherly, you know, check-up on me and to let me know what is going on with her. I thoroughly enjoy the conversations thatmy mother and I have. A seemingly standard generic conversation routinely evolves into an exquisitely-enlightening and cooperatively-hereditary moment;naturally serendipitous in occurrence rather than by a forced obligatory design. Each of our conversations further fortifies our bond, while simultaneously yielding insight about the spiritual-being that came by birth through my mother. The dialogue is profoundly emotional, and for me it is priceless. As an adolescent, I felt mentally and emotionally lonely and alone. The 'stay in a child's place' generational ideology for rearing syndrome, caused my parents to be more of dictators than communicators. I cannot recall many instances if any when my parents asked me: What do I think, and or how do I feel about anything? They attempted to instead tell me how to think, feel, act, and react to life. My father at times seemed to conjure up wisdom-laced perspectives, knowledge-based cautionary tells, and comprehensible advice, all attained by living, loving, and learning unconditionally. This made him a Father to many more people than just myself. My mother, the prototype at that time of a strong black woman, sparingly shared her inner-beauty; she consistently guarded it as if to preserve its pristine nature; untainted by the environmental touches of marital-dysfunction, resentment, and self-inflected unhappiness. Both are intrepid souls linked in an unconditional love to this day as pristine as the earthly outer-beauty of mother-nature.
Growing-up with two dynamically-emotional extremist whose martial-pendulum afforded me a neutrally prime pivot point between the two allowing my precociousness to cultivate. When the emotional-contrast from my exquisitely-dysfunctional environment became too overbearing, I sought refuge within words. My composition notepad became the brother, and at times became the sister that I never had. I could confide in-between the lines. I felt freedom, relief, confident, and courageous; I felt, intrepid.
Inspiration is like the wind; it is omnipresent and cannot be forecast. Inspiration is synonymous with infinite-possibility; the only barometer is one's imagination. There are a multitude of self-induced emotional-afflictions that can impede one's receptiveness to inspiration, such as: Fear, Envy, Selfishness, and the perceived reality of what is. These emotions create pernicious pessimism in place of an otherwise jovial perspective. Inspiration, equality, and evolution are unconventionally and intimately interwoven into a ritualistic paradigm. Age, race-ethnicity, religion, social, political, and economical statuses garner no favor, hold no merit, and all are non-applicable when it comes to inspiration. Inspiration is the cause, condition, affect, and the effect behind life as we are experiencing it. We ignore the melodic methods of inspiration, choosing a fairy-tale in its place, due to our perception of priority, our pretentiousness, narcissism, and ego. I emphatically implore us to inoculate ourselves from these emotional-afflictions and fairy-tales. Look inside yourselves and feel the wind.
As my mother intricately expressed her day that Friday, a gust of inspiration swirled around me as she began to tell me about my cousin. Mom dukes is one of the most selfless and giving people that I know, and this is the unbiased truth! She proceeds to tell me about the current stage of my cousin’s life journey, which is that my cousin Sharnae Porter won the Boys & Girls Club Southeast Youth of the Year award! This alone is inspirational enough, but to then learn that Sharnae's essay contextually was her refuge within words that she too used to cope with her dysfunctional environment took inspiration to monumental levels of resonating energy with me. I attentively listened, hanging onto each syllable uttered in awe and astonishment as my mother provided a synopsis of Sharnae's essay; paraphrasing as she spoke. I could barely contain the inspiration exuding due to the relation that Sharnae and I share, vastly more in-depth and truly more relative than our hereditary connection via blood or marriage. You see, inspiration is reciprocal when in its natural form. Inspiration needs not to be bartered. Investing in others and investing in ourselves yields the greatest returns of Inspiration.