A Tribe Without Soldiers is a Tribe of Slaves

Tuesday's Take

Somewhere along the way, their has been a drastic increase in the number of people that believe strength is bad and weakness is good.  Okay, maybe that's a bit far but we have definitely crossed a line where we are trying to limit and punish toughness and success while pushing and rewarding softness and mediocrity.

 I understand completely that a need exists for a certain level compassion and meekness in people and society.  I just wish others would realize there is also a need for toughness and strength.  Not just in the physical sense but in the mental and spiritual realm as well.  For some reason people fail to make this correlation between the physical, mental and spiritual when it comes to strength.  If you don't allow people to grow from the tough lessons learned in loss and pain, how can you expect them to not quit during really tough times.

The unfortunate truth is that everyone can't be rich but everyone can achieve success, depending on their definition of success.  The number one determining factor to achieve success, or to be one of the few rich people, is one's willingness to work and their unwillingness to quit!  Like everything in life, the only way to get better at something is through practice.  From a very young age, your resiliency begins to form.  Children will continually work and strive to achieve small goals like reaching a cookie on the counter and retrieving a favorite toy by themselves until a parent tells them they can't or they continue to do it for the child.  The more and more you allow your child to work things out and develop solutions, the better they become at it and the more confidence and resiliency they develop.

As a father I intend to allow my children to feel the results of their actions and or in action.  While I want and hope and pray no serious harm or pain come to them, I want them to learn how to get up after falling down.  I want them to know a loss or setback is never the end but a new beginning.  There is a quote from Thomas Edison regarding his creative journey in inventing the light bulb where when asked how he maintained his desire after so many failed attempts.  Mr. Edison replied, "I've not failed.  I just found 10,000 ways that didn't work."  That is the resiliency I hope to instill in my children.  I don't want them to accept false ceilings or fragile boundaries set up by fear and stereotypes.

I want my children to be the soldiers of their generation.  I want them mentally, spiritually and physically prepared to fight whatever battles may lie ahead.  I want to make sure they never know the shackles of mental slavery.

Jumping the Broom to the Nth Degree

Thursday's Thought Provoker

I remember when I first saw the movie Jumping the Broom.  It actually felt good to see that my problem was not an isolated incident.  I felt sad that it was obviously a large enough epidemic to warrant a fairly successful movie.  I personally feel that this problem, mothers unwilling and unable to 'release' their sons, stems from the lack of fathers in the Black community.  The absence of a father causes women to raise their sons to be their 'man' and after years of raising your 'little man' to be the type of man his father never was, they do not want to let some other woman have the fruits of their labor.  You also have an epidemic of women that choose to inflict all the anger and pain they feel towards the father of the child, out on the child, by berating and emasculating him to the point he never knows what it means or how to be a man or father.

While my father wasn't the absent father you usually hear about, he failed to meet my mothers expectations as a husband, father, and man on a fairly regular basis.  This lead to periodic 'breaks' in the relationship which made me the 'man' of the house often.  I must admit this lead me to hang on the tit much, much too long.  Kinda like the 'mama's boy' in Think Like a Man, I found myself in a situation where I let my mother run off women because of how close our relationship remained at my age.  When I finally got off the tit and on my own, my mother couldn't take it and this was the result after 7 years.


"My Mother-in-Law Believes I'm a Killer"


It is so important that we figure out how to get fathers back into the business of raising children.  The lack of fathers in the home is at the core of so many of the ills of our society.  As much as a appreciate those men out there serving as active daddies in baby mama situations, experiences like my own call attention to the need for active husbands in the home in order to allow the balanced raising of children.  Imagine a world where every child had an active and involved father in the home that rocked as a husband.

Raise the Child

Monday's Meaningful Minute:

In my opinion too many in society have list their way when it come to priorities.  Some how, the accumulation of material goods has become more important than raising a child.  I specifically use the word 'raising' a child because there is a difference in a child that grew up and one that was raised.  In my experience I have come to realize that this epidemic crosses all socio-economic and race boundaries here in the states.  Rather it is the poor white family that works 12 hours a day and relies on government subsidized daycare and public schools, or the rich black family that pays others top dollar; people no longer feel obligated to RAISE their child.

Now the reasons why people no longer feel obligated to raise their child are too numerous to list and even if I tried, there is no way I could know what's going on inside of everyone's mind.  A few reasons I have seen, heard or believe are:

1. Don't know how.
2. Were not raised themselves.
3. Can't afford to.
4. Don't have the time.
5. Can't stand the spouse.

These are just a few of the plethora of absurd reasons people come up with or allow to stop them from raising their child.  I would argue that #1 is the root cause.  Too many just don't know how to raise a child.  If they did they would know that they had to be raised.  They would know that while it does take money, it really takes time and they would make the time.  If they knew how, they would do a better job choosing a mating partner because they knew that raising a child is done best by two.

DIFGTBAF

Damn
It
Feels
Good
To
Be
A
FATHER!

I don't understand how any 'man' would not want to be a father to his child.  I try to promote and model fatherhood everyday because I personally believe the lack of true fatherhood in our society has been a large part of its unravelling.  Therefore I announce to the world that DAMN IT FEELS GOOD TO BE A FATHER!