Have you ever found yourself in what seemed to be a great space with a grievious situation? Had someone say something to you in a moment of time that took all of about 5 seconds or 5 minutes to express...but the next 5 months or years to recover from? This happened to me recently.
On Father’s Day, of all days!
I won’t bore (or titillate) you with the specifics of the conversation, but the short end of it involved me being away on business and receiving an impromptu invitation from a friend that I served a portion of my 13.5 years of federal incarceration with. This individual has since been released and provides private security for prominent people. My friend woke me up from a coma-like nap that I desperately needed after running on about 8 total hours of sleep within two days. I get to the event and it is a networking utopia, an Eden of individuals from all spectrums of influence that range from political principles, to executives in the music and film industry. I am privileged to take selfies with directors, exchanging numbers with Congress officials, and follow Hollywood producers on IG and Snapchat! I mean, this is a beautiful space — good music, great food, phenomenal people, brilliant minds!
Because I am the kind of person that seeks to create and curate spaces for those that I consider my “power partners” to enter, especially when I have access to particular spaces that they may not have immediate invitations to, the entire time I am there, I am thinking of which one of my power partners I can plug and weave into different conversations for future opportunities. One person in particular, who is in the VIP space of my life, is who I think would fit perfectly into the framework of the room. This partner is one of the most precocious minds I have had the privilege of gleaning information from, and one of the most sincerest spirits to intersect with and in my life. This partner is someone that pays opportunities forward, who doesn’t covet things for oneself, nor does the RIGHT things for the WRONG reasons! This partner proved to be responsible in many situations and circumstances that has been presented through myself and others in the length of time we’ve been knowing each other (which, when you come from a criminal space in life where people’s handshakes don’t necessarily match their smiles, can be very refreshing!).
After exchanging business cards and shooting the breeze in that beautiful space, I jumped in the SUV I was up at 2 AM searching the streets of D.C. for, thinking it was stolen (long (weird) story short — the D.C. traffic authority “moved” it from one parking space to another two blocks away because I was parked in a zone that allowed for such to happen), and was immediately confronted with an ugly situation. I get a call from the very power partner that I had in exclusive thought to curate the above-mentioned prospects for and, before I could preamble with a, “You won’t believe what just happ-”
I get cut off with a verbal assault that felt like a indefensible barrage of punches from Floyd Mayweather! I mean, the accusations were something I am still attempting to make sense of! You see, it’s one thing for me to be accused of something I can both make sense and am guilty of. I can wear my weight in that. If the indictment is as such that I said I would arrive in an hour and I showed up long after for having detoured somewhere? Guilty! If the count reads that I have been lax in my boundaries with people and allowed them to enter unrestricted places? Guilty! If the charge is that I have not been as available to family and friends in preferred times? Guilty! If the arraignment is for avoiding necessary confrontation, or not interacting with people at all times with the propriety that the engagement required, or not moving on personal timelines that I know impacts other people? Guilty, guilty, guilty! But the one thing that I have a very serious issue with is being accused of something that I am absolutely innocent on all counts on. No court of conscience in the minds of anyone that has ever known me will convict me of being disloyal, as I have often been loyal to a fault. Loyal to a fault that I have sat in an FBI, Secret Service, and ATF interrogation room, shown written statements against me of co-defendants who I had intimate knowledge of being involved in far more egregious crimes, and didn’t breath a solitary word.
We should understand, words have a metaphysical dynamic that can encourage us to run for the office of the Presidency, or cripple us to find ourselves in a prison. Not necessarily what we say to people, but how we express our concerns to others, can position them in a place of ‘beauty’ to grow from and go on to embark in great exploits, or deflate them into the ‘ugliness’ of addiction, bigotry, racism, etc. Life is often paradoxical; it can produce both the best of times and the worst of times...all at the same time! It can make one ecstatic about being a first-time home owner, but anxious about maintaining a 15 to 30 year mortgage. It can make the most beautiful bride on the wedding day...but the ugliest wife thereafter. It can produce the greatest public personas...but the most terrible private people.
The ugliness of that exchange with my power partner came during a time when I desperately needed some beauty. It came on the eve of medical treatment I have been nervous about undertaking. It came on a day where I wasn’t necessarily feeling as appreciated as a co-parent. It came 15 minutes before I checked a voice mail that said my dad was in the emergency department for chest pain.
Paradoxes are the spaces that intersect the star-crossed lovers, the sinner and saint, the right places at the wrong times, the great opportunities with grievous decisions, and the likes thereof. Paradoxes are the space that causes you to love someone you don’t necessarily like! If you have found yourself in a beautiful space with an ugly situation, there is no panacea that I can offer to dichotomize the blending of the two. What I will offer is the simple, unsophisticated, but sometimes challenging to swallow prescription of love. Love will lead you to a space that will cause you to forgive, forge ahead, and follow a path that will lead you more into the beauty life that ugliness can’t show its face in.