#WEARETHEANTIDOTE - Part 3 of 3

For me, being the antidote starts with a willingness to say hello. I look at some people, listen to some people, am offended by some people so much so that I give up on them and on moral excellence. But there's never been anything wrong with virtue as it doesn't have an expiration date. The more we encounter destructive thinking and behavior, the deeper we should delve into our true ability to be "given against" such things. Why in the world would we become the thing we revile? Why? Because there's a little toxin in us all and unlike the body, we get to choose whether or not we develop the antibodies or not. If we desire, we can be overrun with the influence of disintegration. Division has an addictive quality to it. But we have within us the divine capacity to reintegrate.

Every stranger can't be my enemy and not all my teammates want to take what I have. We've become so suspicious and prejudiced that the notion of loving one's neighbor as him/herself is nearly impossible. But still, we are the antidote and the chemical composition of "us" is basic stuff like: hello, holding the door for the person behind us, learning someone else' story, doing things without expecting a thank you and cleaning up messes we've made. No one questions whether or not it is better to help society live than die. We question whether or not we play a role in making it live. Yet we know full well...what we are. Listen intently to your complaints today. Write them, meditate on them, simmer even! Note how they make you feel and then be "given against" them. Ask yourself if your complaints have led you to do what's right simply because it's right. If they've led you elsewhere, just know that your real identity is as ANTIDOTE not venom.

#WEARETHEANTIDOTE - Part 2 of 3

We do it all the time, choosing the poison of retaliation as modus operandi. Our operating system often looks a lot like living under the control of impulse and convenience, blaming and targeting others as interlopers to our expectations. But antidotes restore vitality. We are the antidote(s). And personally, here are a couple of stifling realities I experience that poison me. #1 Racism #2 Classicism #3 Theft. These toxins mess up everything they touch and they're easy to both hate and replicate. One minute I'm complaining that a non-black doesn't understand why I brush my hair or keeps mistaking me for the other black guy. The next I'm using broad strokes in a conversation to demonize that group of people. Two wrongs still don't make a right. Sounds like poison being prescribed to cure a snake bite.

I'm convinced more than ever, though, that we are the antidote. An antidote is meant to heal. But maybe most of us humans, no matter our religion, really enjoy getting even more than we do healing. Somehow we think that one middle finger begets another. We think that the best way to protect our children is by isolating them and keeping them in view. But I'm convinced that there would be less Amber alerts if the village at large was allowed to look after our kids a bit. The villagers would dispose of pedophiles and the like.

#WEARETHEANTIDOTE - Part 1 of 3

The word "antidote" has this greek rendering that means "given against." It's the counter agent to whatever toxin you've been exposed. In 2007 I was stung by no less than 15 wasps at once. My wife happened to come outside as I was writhing in the driveway. She remembered that mud is said to function as an analgesic and proceeded to turn on the hose. She made some mud, smeared all over my head where most of the stings occurred and the pain gradually subsided. How do we treat our figurative wasp stings?

Antidotes, I've read, can be created by injecting small amounts of a poison into an animal so it can naturally produce antibodies. Those antibodies can then be extracted to save say a human life. But in our world, what if the venom is unkindness, isolation and self-absorption? When people insist on not making eye contact with me, I usually let 'em off the hook. I don't engage. I have neighbors on either side of me that I don't know. Many strangers don't want to know me (venom) and I respond in kind by pretending I don't care (also venom). Huh? The antidote to unkindness, isolation and self-absorption is certainly not to reflect those non-virtues. But isn't that what we do? Tit-for-Tat? A husband cheats on his wife and she fixes his wagon with a comparable act. Your teammate won't pass you the ball so on a routine 3-on-2 fast break you return the solid and cost your team buckets. There's a small picture and a big picture that we see in the worlds in which we live. Focusing on the small one is always the most poisonous because it's only about us. (Part 2 tomorrow...)

TREY EIGHT

Dude asked me yesterday if I felt 38 years old. I ain't trying to read into a simple question too much but that's like asking someone how much they love their unborn kids. Or maybe it's more like being asked, "Do you miss the NBA career you never had?" Wait a minute, I got it. I visited my sister in Brooklyn, New York earlier in October for the first time. I had never been to the east coast...EVER! I once spent a few days in Miami, Florida as part of a demonstration team for a coaching clinic but as east as that was...it wasn't New York.

I hadn't seen Ground Zero, hadn't ridden a New York Subway train, hadn't been to Union or Times Square and hadn't hooped at a park just a minutes from the Barclays Center. It was a new and foreign experience so if someone had asked me upon my return if New York felt like New York it would have been an impossible question to answer. To what could I compare or contrast the current experience. I mean...the subway train caught me off guard when it took-off and an elderly New Yorker riled up as I fell into his space. I stood on the grounds of the most grave and gripping memorial I will ever behold at 9/11 Tribute Center 120 Liberty Street NY, NY 10006. What''s my reference point of comparison for a location where ghastly events robbed a city of 3,000 inhabitants. 

Back to age 38. I've never been this close to 40. I don't feel old per se but I do feel different. There is a sense of urgency in me but I swear that was there 4-5 years ago. The latest sensitivity to the new age terrain, however, involves all the usual suspects. I have no biological children and the cats in the NBA my age are becoming a select few. I'm not as motivated to even play basketball as I was at 23 though I can find that drive when called out ha ha. But feelin' 38? I'm not feelin' 38. I mean, I'm felin' 38 in the sense that I appreciate not punchin' out at 37. Life is no right as much as it is a sign that God's grace persists. So yeah...I'm feelin' 38 with both hands, so-to-speak. But as far as 38 goes, I know that men my age post questions online like, "What can I expect at my physical? I didn't play sports in high school and haven't had a health exam in 22 years." C'mon bruh. That ain't got nothin' to do with being 38 and its commensurate ailments. I don't hate doctors enough to stay away that long. And while weight rooms and eliptical machines are the opposite of sexy, I'm not trying to feel 38, not that way. 

So what now? What's the difference between 38 and 28? The late 30s is a season. Jay Z once said, "I used to think rappin' at 38 was ill but last year alone I grossed 38 mil..." Is that the difference ha ha. Maybe for Jigga but not this bruh. Now young people get to chattin' with you and you realize, "Man I got 15-20 years on this person. They hit you with a sir or compliment you on ya shoes as if they didn't expect swag from somebody your age. Then 38 hits you a little bit. The role is mentor now. The perception of others shifts. I mean...old is not the operative word. But there is guidance responsibility I feel now that I didn't say 8 years ago. It is what it is and I'm down. Like so much else, age is the stuff of labels. Categories are tempting as we try to figure out where we belong at various stages of life. I can't get down with 'em though. 38 is perfectly public for me. No shame. But the meaning of the number is unclear. All I now is that I should probably keep tellin' the truth and learning from as many people as I can. Jesus only needed 33 years to live full and with purpose. I've gotten five more than he had so the least I could do is keep eyes up. Happy Halloween.

IN CURRENT TRAFFIC

...Took a break from blogging to start a podcast and I'm convinced that as many people love listening to 30 minute tirades as do the number of those who love reading them. Anyway, I had been thinking quite a bit lately about how I got to school from the 4th through 8th grades.

Let me start by asking you how your kids get to school? Do they walk, take a bus, hitch a ride with a neighbor family? Do you take them and make yourself late to work some days as they meander and stall because they've been Instagramming and texting all night? If you don't have kids, can you remember how you got to school? Well, I can.

According to Google Maps, with "normal" traffic my route to school from about 1984-1989 was 1 hour and 10 minutes. That's a one-way trip. That's barring an accident on one of the three busiest freeways in Los Angeles (I-10/405/101). Ignorance is a saving grace man. I knew I was in school with kids who walked or were driven to school. But I don't remember thinking too much about that after I was on the bus in the afternoons. I thought more about finding a way to sneak and eat my candy on the bus ride home without the driver seeing me. I memorized lines for my role as the Cowardly Lion in the school's production of the Wizard of Oz. I attempted to complete homework on that ride home while fending off Corn Nuts, ambient laughter and exhaust fumes. Some days I just slept until a jolting brake alerted me that the bus was exiting the freeway for the first afternoon stop.

Whether going or coming, the ride from South Los Angeles to Woodland Hills was a labor in hindsight. It was anywhere from 2 hours and 20 minutes to 3 hours spent on the road round-trip and it all started because mom thought it'd be a better educational opportunity. So...what precious virtue was forged from this furnace of daily expedition you ask? Here's what I got:

PATIENCE
For the majority of the 5 years I attended schools in the San Fernando Valley, it required me to take two buses from my home to school. Back then Metro Transit Association (MTA) was known as the Rapid Transit District (RTD), also known as the Rough Tough & Dangerous because of the stereotype that gang altercations ensued on these public buses. I got up for school between 5 and 5:45 a.m. from the time I was 9 years old until I was 13 and began my day as early as most adults who rise early to earn a living for their families. The RTD, if on time or not missed, was a 10-minute ride to my school bus stop from which I boarded the Los Angeles Unified School District or contracted equivalent transportation en route to the promised land. It's still vivid how I felt on those mornings, anxious to prove that I was intelligent, eager to perform well with peers who didn't ride a school bus. Everyday felt like a basketball tryout and for whatever reason I was willing to endure mild Carmegeddon for the chance at an escape route from the inner-city.

RESOLVE & RESOURCEFULNESS
Sometimes buses break down and while your science teacher is reading the paper and having coffee in his San Fernando Valley home, as a "bussed-in" kid you have to decide to wait until the bus arrives (could be hours), run to another stop to try and catch a different bus headed to the same location or sprint to your school-bus stop because the RTD never came that morning. Oh and there's also thugs who don't care how young and small you are. Some mornings you simply have to decide how to evade or engage these cats who prey on the week like 1 and 2-men war tribes. I wasn't a fighter by nature and everyday presented the possibility of getting jacked on the way to school. But when it was all said and done I finished the 8th grade. I figured that a couple moments in a full sprint beats a full day of dodging the imbeciles who would harass you all day if you went to school in your own neighborhood.

HUMILITY
I wish I could say that I didn't experience racist indoctrination prior to my integrated education. But I didn't grown up in communities where Americans of African Descent trusted Whites. Truth is, it's hard going from black homogeneity to white homogeneity, from being the majority to being a gross minority...gross in every since. When I was in fourth grade, Madonna was fresh on the pop scene pretending she had only recently lost her virginity. Kids in the Valley loved her while I barely knew who she was. Boys in Woodland Hills were saying, "Bitchin' and Rad," and their jeans were rolled at the bottoms and uncreased. What? Hair was spiked and argyle sweaters were en vogue, but not where I was from. So when I had seen enough, I mumbled, "Madonna Sucks!" and this kid said if Madonna sucks you suck. I had only recently started using the word "sucks". It sounded terribly offensive. But when in Rome yo. So the encounter escalated, he called me a "Nigger" and a smashed him in his face when the teacher wasn't looking. I think he knew he'd provoked at least a portion of the encounter so he didn't tell on me. I was terrified. I thought I'd be kicked out of school but that was the end of it.

I realized at some point that the teachers were well aware of the difference between us bussed-in kids and the natives. But whatever reservations they may have had, I benefited from Mrs. Kaufman and Mrs. Morford. Fourth and Fifth grade were "dope" experiences for me. No matter what challenges I had on the playground, these white women treated me with respect and demanded the same of me as anyone else. This was a big deal too since I was in some kind of cohort with the higher performing students. I swear I was one of 2 black kids in the classes. But it was in those first two of the five years that I learned to accept help from those willing to offer it. Color matters but there is no honor in refusing tutelage. It was as if I had been fortunate enough to be placed with teachers who responded to students who demonstrated a willingness to learn.

CROSSOVER
Long before I was ever good at basketball, I lived between this 'hood and suburb world. My white friends made light of it and my urban homies called me an Oreo when I slipped up and used proper English. The Valley kids didn't believe that gunshots were a nightly occurrence in South LA. They didn't believe that once I got on that bus in the afternoon, I had to change a little bit, smile less, check my wardrobe to make sure I wasn't displaying the wrong colors. But whether they believed it or not, a kid had better understand his transition as routine if he intends to succeed across the divide of inner city dwelling and affluent academia. I learned the hard way that speaking too proper an English dialect in my home neighborhood could come across as arrogant to adults and peers whereas speaking slang in Woodland Hills netted you caricature status. So at school if you blurred the lines or forgot where you were, you might have an Argyle sweater walk up to you rocking side-to-side with his hands overly demonstrative while yammering, "Yo, yo, ma homeboy. W'ssup?" The crossover is a learned skill by which you learn to effectively communicate without consciously betraying your identity. Those five years in the Valley taught me how to communicate without losing myself.

I'm realizing this has gotten long and I need to get ready for work so to be continued...

p.s. - Peace to Serrania Elementary and Parkman Junior High School.

CP3: UNIVERSAL POINT GUARD

The new NBA Players Association president is Clippers point guard Chris Paul and I couldn't think of a better choice. Check the resume: He's a dad, an all-star, an Olympic Gold Medalist and he's coachable. I once met former Lakers sharp shooter and former New Orleans Hornets head coach Byron Scott and he told me how upset Chris was when he (Scott) was fired in New Orleans. The reaction was like that of a kid who amusingly tries to stick up for his dad when pops comes home and says, "I was fired today son." CP3 was ready to make some calls to the owner, ready to protest, ready to fight for all things decent. I think Coach Scott talked him off the frontline.

But Paul seems like an extremely protective guy, someone with a high quotient for justice and someone who has decided it's too much work to try and convince people that you're something other than who you were born to be.

He's quoted on brainyquote.com as having said, "No matter where you put me, I don't care if it is North Carolina, Florida, California, New York City; I'm going to be who I am." I like this next quote even better where he's recorded saying, "I trust my wife more than I trust myself." That's a real man talkin'.

There's something about CP that makes you wanna buy a jersey. There are some people who are bigger than the sports they play, whose jersey number and last name signify something transcendent. It's like what comes to mind when you see the words Johnson in purple over #32 or Manning over #18 up in Denver. In the moments we are blessed to encounter an athlete who is both competitor and ambassador, we find it difficult to merely fanaticize toward the iconic figure; we actually desire to emulate that personified inspiration. We prescribe that emulation to ourselves, to kids, to random others. The impact of an athlete who crosses over from phenomenal performer to "leader" can never be measured. Derek Fisher is a similar case study of a clutch guy who's ethos permeated his profession. But Fisher was not in the echelon that CP3 is currently in. And that makes Chris Paul even more interesting to watch. He's about as elite as it gets and yet he says things like...

"I have a Dominique Wilkins Hawks jersey that I still wear. That's probably my favorite one. What's funny is that I spend all this time collecting jerseys, and now people are out there collecting mine."

Almost without trying, just by being himself, Paul is grounded. It just so happens that his self is a transparent, honest self. Sometimes it's hard to believe he was literally a Laker for several hours until David Stern vetoed the trade.

I keep arguing that the character driven athlete, the basketball player who is self-aware will undoubtedly outperform his deluded counterparts. And I guess that's true to a degree. But more impressive to me is when a guy like Chris Paul embraces leadership as if to say, I've been a point guard my whole life, why not assist and make plays everywhere else too.

The Quest to be Superior

See if these words strike a chord in you. WE ALL STRIVE TO BE SUPERIOR. I'm the best MC, the best mom, the best point guard. Superlatives are really what people desire. Most likely to be on television or in my case, Most Likely to become the fourth member of a boy band (at the time BozIIMen) while preaching on weekends. That was the fortune fortold of me in 1993 as high school concluded. I kind of preach some weekends but I never got that call from Bell Biv Devoe telling me I was what they needed.

There's probably no better indicator of just how much people want to be superior than when men participate in 3-on-3 basketball. I got that call on Friday night asking me to fill in at the Nike3on3 at LA Live held this past weekend. First bout with superiority? My knee. It didn't feel good as a result of my Wednesday game but was I going to submit to injury. You already know the buffoonish retort. HECKKKKKK NAW! I'm a man. So I played. And I took Advil which I never do as insurance. Keep in mind, I wasn't asked to save a life or walk into a burning building to retrieve babies. I was asked to play basketball in one of the most volatile environments. And so i quested to be superior to my weakness and then to be superior to other weekend warriors.

Why is 3-on-3 so bad? Because every trained basketball player and coach knows that this is one of the purest forms of basketball. If you screen and cut, communicate and move without the ball in your hands, it's poetry in motion. If you're selfless and you exploit match-ups, spoils go to the cerebral. But that's not the brand of hoop played in front of Staples Center. It's more like, "Nah bruh, I gotta pound that dude. He's being physical so I'm gonna be physical. He's shoving so why play basketball when I can bruise." I watched brutish men throw each other around like it was a WWE Royal Rumble. And it's not about prize money. It's about that P-R-I-D-E. I'm the alpha, no I'm the alpha and so-on. Question is...why the quest for such an elusive payoff? It'd be equally asinine to chase the tail most humans weren't born with or attempt to taste wind. Who's superior? Is Kobe Bryant , who in 17 seasons of NBA participation has won 5 championships to date? Because then, by superior, we mean reaching the pinnacle of performance only 29 percent of the time qualifies as superior. Or go with Mike Jordan because he got 6 in about 15 seasons. Okay, so now I'm at 40 percent success which in my classes growing up equated with TAKE YO DUMB BUTT HOME AND STUDY SOME MO' because 40 percent is an F-minus.

So somewhere along the line, a myth was purported and spread that superiority is achievable. Drake wasn't the first guy to assert that he started from the bottom (which he didn't) and rose to stardom via hard work. The myth of questing for superiority promises that it's accessible for the relentless. I assure you it is not as evidenced by 3-on-3 basketball and athletes worldwide. I was at the Drew League at King/Drew Magnet High School in South Central yesterday.  I saw James Harden and Metta World Peace team up and lose a close one to a team of less famous men. It was funny too because the player formerly known as Ron Artest once maliciously elbowed Harden in the back of the head a couple of years back causing him to leave a game. I digress.

Back to the lecture at hand though, there's something evil about questing for superiority. It's like we weren't meant to actually be God. We are housed in these mortal frames with limitations that stem from our emotions, vices, physical injury, etc. No one can rule forever. No one can be the best everyday. And so why make claims that you can. The first time I saw a dead man in the streets it was allegedly due to one man's failed quest for superiority. He had been in an altercation earlier that day and had successfully beaten up a man who after the beat-down vowed to come back with a gun. The recipient of said ass-whipping kept his promise. And the superior became fatally inferior and the inferior became, for a moment, superior. Ah...to know what came of that shooter though. Ancient wisdom literature says that, "Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to those with knowledge, but time and chance happen to them all." While in the midst of time and chance our quests are better spent on discovering purpose. I can assure you that I wasn't put on Earth just to win a 3-on-3 basketball tournament. I'd certainly like to believe there's more for me here than that.