living in the now 'n' later
At the basis of moral/religious doctrine is the concept that one reaps what one sows. Your actions have consequences. When our consequences happen quickly, it’s tragic, but it's visible, and it makes sense. We say-well—that’s what so and so gets, or what did he think was gone happen?
For instance, I was driving Interstate 10 somewhere between Alabama and the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I was in the middle of moving from Tallahassee to New Orleans, and my car was packed down with my clothes and objects. I swung into the left lane, trying to pass, but the van in the left lane wouldn’t budge, keeping me boxed in. I was finally able to pass, and I zoomed off, pissed. Traffic slowed, and the same van came behind me, trying to pass. I began playing cat and mouse with him, keeping him from getting over. No sooner had I zoomed past him going 80, my car swung and jerked. In that instant, I knew I was going to meet my maker. The car was jumping and wobbling and making the most frightening, metallic, thump-bumping sounds. I got a hold of myself, took my foot off the gas, and locked the wheel straight in my hands. I lightly pressed the brake and directed the car toward the shoulder. My heart was like tennis shoes in a dryer; I hadn’t been breathing. I calmed myself down, put on my emergency lights, and ventured outside of my car to investigate. The front passenger side tire looked like it had exploded. I knelt beside it, shocked and afraid but relieved and grateful. Some kind of way I ended up scratching my leg on that wire shit that was hanging out of the tire. Some kind of way, I ended up covered in something black.
I got up feeling miserable and sorry for myself, and I felt worse when popped the trunk. All the shit I had wedged in there would have to be taken out so I could get to the spare. I started unpacking stuff, sniffling and huffing the whole time. Then I’m there in front of my trunk, crying, bleeding, and dirty with my bags and personals all out and on the ground. I was reminded of the James Brown song my mother would sing when I was young: You got to get ready for the big payback. I had no business fucking with that van. Fortunately, not long after, I got rescued by a good Samaritan in an 18-wheeler. He set up those little caution triangles and went to work. I had had a similar situation when I was in college. I was multi-tasking and passing cars at 85 when I threw a plastic bag out of the window. Instead of flying toward the back, it plastered itself on my front window. In my panic, my car sailed off the shoulder and landed with a bone-shuddering crash along the edges of a cotton field. It hit the ground so hard that I knew the car was forever changed, but I also felt it had reconstituted something inside me permanently as well. And it had. Those were both lessons I never had to learn again.
Yesterday, the news of Denise “Vanity” Matthew’s passing had me feeling all types of ways. It was the same way I felt when Michael Jackson passed and the same way I felt when Whitney Houston passed. These were people I didn’t know personally, but whom I knew intimately, people whose lives informed my childhood dreams and imaginations. Vanity was glamorous, gorgeous, magnetic, and she hung out with Prince. In a time when black female entertainers shied away from sexuality to avoid being stereotyped, she was bold, liberated, and sexy. If you asked me, what better life could you ask for? But as with many in the spotlight, the person and the persona are not always in agreement. During that time, Ms. Matthews developed problems with substance abuse. Though she kicked her habit, the damage drugs had done to her body caused her health problems and an early demise.
If it were up to me to dream the way her life would have gone, it wouldn’t be thatI pictured her marrying some aging basketball player and making a stable of beautiful daughters, who would try out for American Idol or be on Love and Hippety Hop or go into entertainment law. She would stay in the fringes of the news by attending charity events and maintaining her scrumptious Ms. Parker-ness. But ordering her life wasn’t up to me, and that’s not how it went. Ms. Matthews fought for and won sobriety, and she transformed her life into something very different than it had been. She didn’t take any royalties from her past work, nor did she make any acknowledgement to who she once was, no matter how beautiful or iconic she was to others. However, cutting herself completely off from the notoriety of her past couldn’t waylay the damage it had done.
I’m a firm believer that when people hear someone has died, and they ask first how it happened, it’s not to be nosy; it’s to see if it’s a death that’s preventable by reasonable action on their own part. For example, if some Hollywood actor gets eaten by a shark when he falls off a surfboard, I can pretty much say that won’t be me. And although my reassurance won’t add a minute on my life, it gives me a feeling that I have some sort of control over the randomness of life. Said reassurances, however, have never kept me from doing things repeatedly I know don't serve me.
Whether we are that person who smokes for 20 years and stops, or drinks for 30 years and stops, or never keeps our weight down until the doctor gives us an ultimatum—we all do things that can hurt us in the long run. Usually, we know the whole time that the habit isn’t good for us, but it often doesn't make a difference. Why is it when our lives are threatened in a dramatic fashion, we can easily correct things, but when our damage happens as a result of sustained action on our part, our Selves are so much harder to correct? When the damage is bone deep, and we are the culprit, where does it leave us? The answer may lie in the words a wise woman once wrote, 'the days are long, but the years are short.' Our present short sights us, and in that way, our habits become ritual. I am not in any way suggesting we live in fear, but in the realization that every act, once performed, is the past. There is some shit you can't take back, some damage that can't be undone. We can't just live in the now; we have to live in the now and later.
One of the biggest components of the evolution of my mind was my decision not to focus on the things I thought others were doing to harm me but instead focusing on the things I was doing to harm myself, physically and mentally. If I did the internal work, the external circumstances were less likely to drive me to frustration or habit. People and events can trigger me, but my response is also habit, and it can either bring about confusion or peace. That choice is ours. Being able to respond regularly in a way that minimizes damage takes self-control, self-healing, and self-love. It is how we cultivate the god in ourselves.
Rise in Power, Vanity. tuxedo+tails+boots=lawd have mercy!!