I'm Tired!

  Today I awoke with a feeling of irritation, a frustration, downright anger at myself and our village. When I say our village, it refers to the individuals, families, organizations, sports and religious in our communities who directly give birth to, educate, feed, discipline, and supposedly prepare our children to live full productive loving lives.

  I was feeling some kind of way because I'm constantly reminded of how many things are not...I repeat, are not being communicated and passed on to our up and coming young men and women. We are too often leaving them to their own thinking when it comes to planning and preparing for a good future that makes them feel purposeful, worthy, and productive. We are still not understanding that when a person is void of these things, it invites chaos, poverty, violence, hopelessness, young unprepared parents, lack of skill/commitment to higher education, and yes dependency on alcohol/drugs and other self destructive behaviors.

To sum it up I'm really tired!!!

Tired of reading and learning about young people getting caught up, locked up, shot up before the age of 30 (at an alarmingly high rate).

Tired of the "Merry-go-round" parenting style so many use...well that's how I was raised and I turned out ok (ok truth be told YOU ARE NOT OK)!

Tired of the age old misconceptions of what a "Real Man" looks like, acts like...yet many of the ones handing down these twisted ideas have no real clue on a grand scale of what a real man acts like because the people they learned from may have had the best intentions but they were bruised and somewhat lost themselves...trying to do the best they knew how based on the life lessons they had learned. 

I'm super tired of grown folks not following through on their promises, commitments where our young people are concerned and then being shocked when those same kids who were repeatedly disappointed, disillusioned, ignored, neglected, and even abused...become cold, uncaring, angry and sometimes even killers.

I'm just tired, when will we understand that "today's decisions directly effect tomorrow's consequences"? 

 I'm tired of our anger towards police brutality and the realness of white supremacy...yet our LACK OF ANGER AND ACCOUNTABILITY towards our running in circles generation after generation. Let us be angry at how we speak so harshly to our children (sometimes referring to them as B******, Mother******* when they are no older than 5 and 6. This trains them to view themselves and others in a certain way and that is NOT OK! Let us be angry that we don't make time to learn about money, investing, saving and make it a priority to hand that information down like we do our Sweet Potato Pie recipes.  Let us be angrier still that we tell our children what they should do, should be, but how often do we give them our complete undivided attention and really listen to how they feel about any and everything without judging them? Let's rethink things and do better, shall we?

Perhaps it is past time to rewrite the rules we play and live by, because what we are doing and have been doing for years is no longer (if it ever was) doing us any darn good. I'm tired of the "Hood Rules", aren't you?