“The only constant is change.”
Heraclitus, Philosopher.
In this season of cheer and goodwill, I have decided to be magnanimous to my enemies by giving them something to gloat about. Here’s my secret admission, I very often walk around traumatized and burdened by the fact that there is an increasing decline in reading and participation in self-improvement seminars by people of color. I even secretly theorize that the idea of a seminar or any fora that requires attention and concentration has been scratched from the black agenda. My pain is intense because I observe this incredible lack of intellectual curiously, this casual rejection of anything written or spoken.
So gloat at my suffering, rejoice at my pain, but ask yourself this question, can we compete in a technological/digital world, an information based world without the ability to read, understand and reason? I don’t think so and neither should you. Its time for a decisive change in our attitudes, lets begin to seek and share information that is verifiable, seek knowledge through our libraries, which still provide books, magazines and newspapers. Can’t you see that we’re being gamed again, being bamboozled into relying on Facebook or twitter for a quick fix, which gets us high on fake news or other people’s opinions and delusions? Are you aware of the brutal attacks launched on people like comedienne Leslie Jones, innocent young schoolgirls harassed and bullied, careers ruined, lives destroyed – all with a key stroke? Have you seen some of the posts on Facebook, have you tried to read some of them, the illiteracy rate among too many of our people is staggering and all is on full display for the children we are raising. Why would you display your ignorance shamelessly and publicly, is it because you don’t know that you don’t know?
The mind expansion boom I anticipated during the Barack Obama era never materialized. Why did I expect that boom or increased interest in things written and spoken? Because the president is an inspiring and intellectual president, I believed we could now convince ourselves and our children on the value of learning to ensure more presidents will look like him. I believed there was a collective hope that – that particular era would usher in a renaissance of new ideas and possibilities for people of color. An opportunity to seize the initiative and prepare ourselves and especially our children “to think we can,” that we can change from slothful to successful, from victim to victors. Instead we have been hijacked by religion and technology; Facebook is now the new drug of choice and religion is the panacea. My Facebook page or timeline is now church central, complete with prayer lines and Facebook ministers of the word; am I the only one that noticed?
So, I am making a public appeal in the spirit of the New Year, can we CHANGE and emerge from this self-absorbed, narcissistic condition and resort to good old fashioned reading? Believe me most Asians and White’s still do, they have not drank the cool-aid as we have. They are still insisting that their children learn to read and write the old fashioned way, while we’re kidding ourselves that writing will soon be obsolete. You all said 10 years ago, that newspapers would be gone, old news, wrong – they’re still alive. I know that I am pissing-off a lot of people, but they won’t know because they don’t read.
We need resounding changes in our communities of color, and these are changes ‘we ourselves’ must make in order to survive in TrumpWorld; that’s the new world we live in, where you will be reminded daily, maybe hourly with every tweet – that “the only constant is change.” The smart thing to do is make the necessary change or changes in our lives voluntarily, the idea of change being imposed is usually unwanted and uncomfortable.
The wisdom of people like Henry Ford or Tony Robbins offers us this reason to change, they tell us, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”Albert Einstein is even more compelling, he says, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”
In my book “Release Stress and Revitalize Your Life,” under the chapter titled – ‘if what you’re doing isn’t working, do things differently’ I write, “the life of the tree has always depended on its flexibility and resiliency in the harsh outside elements; in storm, wind, snow and rain. The tree does whatever it needs to do: it sheds its leaves in the fall and winter and sends its roots deeper into the earth in the spring. The tree, even while stationary, continues to move and change direction when necessary. Nature tells us that flexibility and versatility are instinctive and natural survival tendencies.”
If we accept 2017 as a new Turning Point in our lives, it shouldn’t be hard to make that CHANGE, remember, “the only certainty is uncertainty,” “the only constant is change.” Welcome to change!
