SORT IT OUT

Jay-Z once said, “So you changed ya attitude before they asked what happened to you.” The longer I live the more I observe. And the more I observe young people the more I think that decisions hold crazy weight. In other words, I’m starting to grasp the gravity implicit in every one of our choices. From moving away to becoming a parent before the 20th birthday to treating drugs as an auxiliary, it is clear that the most recent version of adolescent/young adult is smack dab in the middle of a crucible. I have one person in mind.

This person became a parent before his senior year in high school. This person is an athlete. This person gets high on the endorphins related to sport. This person also gets high on marijuana. And I have a hunch the earth resident birthed to this person is in the nebulous of grandparent surrogacy and early infant estrangement to parents who still need a bit of rearing themselves. How’s your addition? The summation of these elements makes for a conundrum worth sorting out. And to think that attitude could be the only thing that needs altering so that a child knows his parent, so that marijuana is an impediment removed, so that endorphins are not limited to physical exercise but expanded to include potential realized. “You never know,” said the sage. Truth is, perhaps we always know. We always know the difference between destructive and constructive, between detrimental and enlivening. But attitude, perspective, paradigm may very well be what stands between people saying, “I wonder what ever happened to him” and “Man….what happened to him.”