During my adult life I’ve had a bunch of different apartments around Philadelphia. Yesterday I walked through one of my old neighborhoods for the first time since I lived there six years ago. Well, I’ve been around the area since then, but yesterday I walked down a street I used to walk on at least twice a day just about every day. Walking that way took me about half a block out of my way, but I was curious about the differences I would see in the area and curious about how the memories would feel.

When I lived there, it was not one of the greatest neighborhoods and its still not, though a few blocks away gentrification/development is in full swing. Walking down the main street from the train to my apartment, there was never much to look at. Abandoned buildings and vacant storefronts lined the street. Yesterday there were some noticeable differences. Several of the once vacant buildings are homes to stores and several are being worked on and it seems that soon the will house business. There was one block sized building that had been condemned – now there’s just a field there. I couldn’t remember exactly where the laundromat I used to go to was, but there’s either a fast food place or a parking lot there now.

Overall, the walk was kind of depressing. Despite the new development, an overwhelming amount of the buildings and stores are empty. A lot of the businesses open are the types you’d expect to find in a low-income neighborhood – businesses that are bad for the health and/or finances of their customers. I couldn’t help thinking of the future of this area. It will not stay the same. many more stores will be opened, buildings will be rehabbed, the streets will be cleaned. The problem is that it will not benefit the long-time residents who live there now. They will be convinced, coerced, and forced into moving out. The city and its businesses will not waste time, money and effort trying to improve the current population, they will bring in a new one, one with money to spend.

While one part of my mind was concerned with the socioeconomic past and future of this area, another part was strolling down memory lane. I was thinking back to the time in my life when i lived in that area. I remembered a song that I wrote during that time. I was walking home from the train when the idea came to me and as soon as I got home I wrote it down and fleshed it out. I wonder if I still have it . . . I remembered the job I was working at the time. Around that time was when I first started hanging at the Crimson Moon . . .

Its always interesting to visit a place of your past.

I didn’t see anyone abusing their child or anything like that, but earlier today, I saw a mother chastising her son. It made me start thinking about disciplining children in general. Some folks believe anytime a child does wrong the child should get a beating. Some reserve physical discipline for the most severe situations. I have no children of my own, but after observing many parents with their children, making a bunch of scattered appearances at various after-school programs, and spending five summers working at four different camps, I do have some ideas and opinions on the matter.

It is a parent’s responsibility to teach their child morality, pragmatism and self-control. Parents cannot teach any of these lessons if the children do not respect and listen to them. I think one of the goals of most parents is to know that when they are gone, their children will continue to apply the lessons the parents tried to teach. You cannot have that kind of lasting impact on a child if fear is your main or only tool to control him. Child raising is all about a complex set of balancing acts. Your child must fear you enough to obey but not so much that the other reasons to obey are lost. Your child should respect you enough to give credence to your word but not so much that he will follow you blindly without thinking for himself. Your child should like you enough to trust and confide in you but not so much that he sees you as one of his peers. What? Not like you too much? Fear you? Let me explain.

Fear and obedience

Your child should fear you. Fear is what will make a child do as you say without questioning. This is not, however, what you should want in the long run. When you control a person by fear, they tend to act very differently when fear is not a factor. The child may do right when under your watchful eye, but as soon as you turn around or leave the child in someone else’s care, all that good behaviour may be out the window. Think of the “preachers daughter”/bad girl cliche. Additionally, I’ve seen cases where parents or other authority figures try to use fear to control their children so much that the children become apathetic towards the technique. When you yell all the time, it may eventually become ineffective. Get enough spankings and you’ll realize that they are not a big deal.

Using fear to control a child is a very short term solution, but it is important. When you tell your child to stop because he is about to run into a crowded street, you need immediate obedience. Afterwards, there will be plenty of time to teach him why he shouldn’t do it, but for the moment, obedience is the priority. When you are out in public, and unable to have a lengthy talk with your child, his obedience is important. As I said, fear is temporary. It is important to follow up by planting the seeds that will prevent your child from repeating the same mistake when he has the opportunity to do it without you knowing. Explain why what the child did was wrong in a way he can understand. Make sure he understands all of the possible and actual consequences of his actions. Of course this all requires great patience and is much easier said than done, but that’s true of many things in life that are worth doing.

Respect and authority

How can you teach your child if your words have no weight? It is important that you present yourself to your child as a respectable and truthful person. Get caught lying too often and your child will lose faith in you. A child needs to see you as an authority figure who can help him find answers to his questions and who will impart wisdom to him. This does not mean you need to or should be seen as perfect. If you make a habit of not admitting when you don’t know the answer, you also stand to lose your child’s respect and trust because at some point it will become apparent that you’re just trying to cover the fact that you don’t know. When you don’t know something, admit it and do your best to help your child find the answer. This may even lead to projects you can work on together. Do this, and your child will grow to learn that you are not a perfect person, but when you say you know, you know.

BUT. There’s always a but. Children should be taught, not trained. They should be encouraged to think, to reflect and search for their own understanding, not to follow the whoever is in authority at the moment. I know this may seem counter productive, but encourage your children to question you in a respectful way. If you are truly right and the situation allows it, take the time to convince your child. This serves two purposes. It will help nourish the child’s intrinsic drive to question and think for himself. It is far better to have him do right because he understands that it’s right rather than simply because you told him to. Secondly, when obedience is necessary, it will come quicker. Your child will learn that you wouldn’t speak that way (expecting immediate obedience) unless it was absolutely necessary.

Friendship and Trust

Don’t get so caught up in being a disciplinarian and figure of authority that you forget to be your child’s friend. All my life I’ve had countless people tell me I can come to them with any problem or question. Parents, teachers, bosses – it seems to be the thing for authority figures to say. There’s only been a small percentage of them who I actually felt comfortable going to. No matter how much you tell your child he can talk to you about anything, he won’t unless he knows that he can trust you to respect him and his feelings. You can encourage that trust by . . . drum roll please . . . respecting him and his feelings. Take the time to hear him out and try to understand his motivations and show him that you understand them. If your child hits someone, don’t simply punish him. Find out why he hit the person. Even if he was wrong to do it, acknowledge that you understand the motivation even as you chastise (e.g. “yeah, I would’ve been mad too, but you can’t hit someone every time you get mad”) If you try to hear the child out every time, you may even find that there are some cases where things are not how they seemed at first appearance and if you had punished him, it would have been wrongfully done.

Developing a friendship between yourself and your child will help create an atmosphere that makes it easier for him to come talk to you. Additionally, in my experience with children, I’ve noticed that the most well behaved and most intelligent children tend to be the ones who are comfortable having conversations with adults. A friendship with your child will most likely even carry over into his adulthood life. The few people my age who see their parents as friends tend to go to them more often for advice and to share more of their lives with them. This sharing seems to make all parties involved much happier.

It is important, however, to maintain the distinction between a parent/child friendship and the type of friendship a child would have with his peer. If your child sees you as a peer, it will undermine your authority and your position as a disciplinarian. You must be able to talk to and have fun with your child but to immediately switch into parent mode when its called for.

Back to the beginning

I started off talking about spanking children. Spanking can serve to make your child fear you. Spanking can increase or decrease your child’s respect for you depending on the circumstances. Spanking can make your child dislike you. The fear part should be obvious – if a child fears a spanking, he will be more likely to be obedient. Children tend to respect disciplinarians if they see them as fear, but beat a child too often and he will lose respect for you, even though it may not show due to his fear. Lessons you teach will not be retained if that respect is lost. If a child feels that you beat him unfairly or too often, you will lose the chance of securing his friendship, he will feel uncomfortable talking to you about problems and the lines of communication will be cut between the two of you.

It is my personal belief that sometimes spankings are necessary. A healthy amount of fear needs to be maintained. However, if a healthy amount of respect and a friendship accompany that fear, spankings should rarely be necessary. If you find yourself regularly spanking your child, that is a sign that you need to evaluate things. The first thing you should look at is your relationship with that child. Are you teaching that child to do right? Are you earning his respect and maintaining your authority? Are the lines of communication open? A large amount of the time, problematic behaviour in children can be traced down to a problem with fear, respect or friendship.

I went to my old house this weekend and it changed. Throughout my life there, my mom has made various changes, repairs and upgrades. I never thought much of it until now. I’ve been out of the house for several years now but I visit regularly. I didn’t notice so much as she continued to change it after I left, but it really hit me this weekend. The first thing that jumps out is that the big tree that was in front of the house is gone. Some of the sidewalk is brand new. The hole in the backyard that was a swimming pool first and then a dumping ground for leaves and cuttings, is now a patch of dirt. The countertops and floor in the kitchen are not the same. It’s all so different. I went to get a plastic bag, and they weren’t where they were supposed to be. Strange.

I spent eighteen years of my life in that house, and it’s not so familiar anymore. I have to ask where things are or search for them when once upon a time I would have grabbed them without a second thought about their locations. In my apartment-changing, far from stable lifestyle, I’ve always of that place as home, and in a way it will always be that, but in a way it is not anymore. It’s kind of like a close friend you haven’t seen in years. When your paths recross, you still feel that closeness and that love, but its awkward because those years apart have made you guys strangers. So much has changed, but underneath all the change, so much is still the same.

Life goes on. I guess that’s the lesson here. You step away from something (or someone) and it doesn’t freeze. Life is constant change and we are surrounded by life – the lives of others and the life we give to the objects that surround us. Make sure you appreciate each and every moment because no matter how wonderful and fulfilling the next one will be, it won’t be quite the same.

I was sitting in a car today watching the back of a truck up ahead. The sun and the surrounding objects were creating a shadow movie on the truck, it was kind of fascinating. I’m sure the guy inside had no idea about what was going on back there. That’s humbling. The world is very different now from what it used to be, even ten years ago. Suddenly, information is readily available whenever we want it – just jump onto the super-highway. Have you been to wikipedia? I’m sure you’ve come across it in your google searches. It’s an amazing tool – a humongous and ever-growing online encyclopedia. But. Despite our constantly growing knowledge and the increasing ease of access to it, we are limited. We can only know so much. Some man in some truck this morning knows driving routes between tons of different locations in this area but he doesn’t know what the back of his own truck looks like when he drives across a bridge on a sunny day. He probably doesn’t even really know what the back of his head looks like.

This is a large universe we live in, and at any given instant, there is a whole universe of information to take in. A slight shift in perspective and a completely different subset of that universe is available to our senses. Proximacy and relevancy mean nothing – few things can be closer and more relevant to me than the back of my own head, but I am in one the worst possible positions to observe it, yet I can give a pretty detailed account of the life of a hippopotamus on the other side of the world.

Socrates taught that the wisest thing a man can do is admit his ignorance. I’m seeing that idea in a whole different light right now. If you don’t admit you’re ignorance, you’re not acknowledging the majority of existence. That would make any person who didn’t admit his ignorance infinitely ignorant. Damn.

Are you a good person? Wait, wait! I won’t make you commit to something like that. There’s only trouble down that path.

Do you believe that you are a good person? I think I’m a good person. I try to be honest and helpful. I do my best to avoid hurting people – others and myself. I try to be compassionate and understanding. Yeah, I think I’m pretty good. But! (I know you saw that ‘but’ coming) But, I could be much better. It just hit me about ten minutes ago that I can be better. It’s not like I ever thought I was anywhere near perfection, I just haven’t thought much about it lately. You know how life gets sometimes – you spend so much time living it that you get distracted from thinking about it.

A little earlier, I was thinking about my current place in this life. Life for me is good right now. A lot of things are working out the way I want them to. Seeds I planted in the past are showing signs of bearing fruit, I am surrounded by good people and I see potential for even more improvement in just about every direction I look. The next stop on the train of thought was the past. There were many times when it seemed that disaster in one form or another was imminent, but things have always worked out in the end for me. Somehow the right person shows up at the last minute or the right opportunity comes knocking – it always worked out.

Maybe I’m such a good person that karma is just constantly in my debt. Hmmm…or maybe its not as simple as “what comes around goes around.” Maybe karma gives us a line of credit. Perhaps all these good things and bad-things-turned-good-things are signs that I’m building up some major debt. Today I am giving myself a new task – pay back karma. You probably won’t see any huge changes in my life, but I resolve to make a greater effort to be that person who shows up at the last minute to save the day. I will try to be good fortune’s vessel because sometimes luck needs a little help.

Word.

“The problem is the solution.” That’s what I just read. Everywhere you look you can find signs of society’s illness. I won’t take the time to list them because really, all you need to do is look. If looking is too hard, just listen. People are always talking about what’s wrong with the world. Everyone complains, but no one fixes it. It’s not because most of the people who recognize the world’s problems are lazy, uncaring people who like to hear themselves speak. It’s because the problem is the solution. I’m sure that if any of the complainers had the answer, they would speak it twice as loud as their complaints. The problem is that the solution isn’t easy or simple. Most of us who take a moment to ponder what ‘s happening around us end feeling small and at times useless. “What can I do?” is such a familiar question. If I had a penny for every time I heard it either in my head or from someone else, I would have enough money to buy a solution.

Well, I have a solution. It’s not an easy solution, it’s not a fast solution, and it’s probably not a complete solution. It is something we can work towards. We are plagued by ignorance. I believe that a large amount of the world’s issues are caused by ignorance. Yes, there are a significant amount of well educated folks who are heavy contributors to what’s-wrong-with-the-world-today, but the main reason that they get away with it is that they are unopposed. Sometimes the economically elite get away with what they do because the masses don’t realize that they deserve more, sometimes they’ve been fooled into believing they’re getting more, and sometimes they want more but don’t know how to get it. Educated people tend to be more ambitious because they are more aware of their options, they are harder to trick, and they are in a better position to pursue what they want.

It’s not just in the fight against economic oppression that education can help us. The more you know, the more you can do. Tons of people in America and throughout the world are not employable because of their lack of education. There is only a limited amount of jobs that require minimal knowledge out there. Education gives people the versatility and flexibility they need to fill the open gaps in the job market rather than wait for a specific gap to open up.

Certain types of crime are less likely to be committed by educated people. One big reason is that educated people are less likely to feel the worst pressures of poverty which can push people to committing criminal acts in order to survive. Another reason is that educated people often think through things more because when you’re sitting in school “learning to learn” that is one of the things you’re being trained for. Life is simply applied logic.

Of course educating folks is not easy, but as I said, its a goal. Too many of our efforts are wasted on short term solutions. If you tell a child not to sell drugs, you are giving him a meal. Showing him alternative means to make money is giving him a fishing lesson. People generally do see education as important, but I don’t think a lot of people realize quite how important. Often, it may seem that it’s best to address society’s problems directly, but when you do it that way, the people trying to help will always be in the minority – picture me against the world. With an educated populace, everyone is in a better position to help him or herself. Currently, America throws tons of money into funding a welfare system that gives cash and food to needy people while our underfunded and badly managed schools are like factories, pumping out people who will soon be in this system. We need to stop the assembly line and focus on the more permanent solution. It would take several generations for the effects of education to be seen, but it truly is the more permanent solution.

What can I do? (and by ‘I’ I mean any and every individual) I can do my best to be a force for education. I can teach. I can try to encourage children to learn and try to nurture their natural thirst for knowledge when possible. I can urge others to do the same. I (personally) can try to teach with my music. Those of us who follow artistic pursuits are in a good position to reach people. We are a part of The Media and the entertainment industry. People listen to the media. If someone likes your art, there’s a good chance that he’ll listen to the message. Be responsible. Make sure it’s a good message. Encourage people to learn and to think.

What about the grown people? Do what you can for them. I’m not saying we should do away with all programs and efforts to attack problems directly, but there is only so much you can do on that front. Teaching someone who doesn’t want to learn can be anywhere from hard to impossible. Keep trying, but don’t lose sight of the real goal. We say our children are our future, but actions speak louder than words.

As we get older, we get to know ourselves better and our self-acceptance improves. This is a constant process. When I am in the twilight of my life looking back on the good days and the bad days, I expect to still experience the disappointments and pleasures of self discovery on a regular basis. Some discoveries are small, some are large. Some are new and some are just shifts of perspective. Recently I made a discovery that was a simple shift of perspective but was still a relatively large discovery. I am my greatest competition. I set the bar for myself.

It hit me after I was free-styling at a cypher. Some days I feel on – the words just flow and take control. Other days I feel like I have to force them – I struggle to find topics and connect thoughts. This was one of those days. It was a constant battle, but I ended up saying some stuff that got me the usual signs of respect – nods, pounds, and compliments. As I was headed home, I realized that the pressure I felt to hold my own was a relatively new one. A year and a half ago when I first started to freestyle on a regular basis, I did not feel that pressure. Back then I was happy if I got through to a point that felt like a good ending without losing my flow in the process. Now I always walk in with a burden on my shoulders and it is not until I reach a certain level of quality that the burden is lifted.

The difference between now and then? I’ve already been given those signs of respect. Who likes to backtrack? Back when I first started, I was just trying to do my best. There was no standard of measure in place, so as long as I knew I tried, I was happy. I guess I could be satisfied with the level I’ve reached and fall back, but for some reason, that doesn’t feel honest to me. I feel I constantly need to re-earn the respect I initially got. Maybe it’s because I want to be respected in the moment. After I die, there will be plenty of time for the “he was”, past tense, static type of appreciation, but for now, I want everyone who appreciates my abilities to appreciate them for what they are in that moment.

This does not only hold true for free-styling or even just forms of artistic expression. Once I realized this about myself in regards to free-styling, I also realized that it is a pattern apparent throughout my life. I remember back in elementary and high school, I used to get frustrated because it seemed that after a short time, teachers would begin to expect more from me even if I hadn’t shown any signs (as far as I knew) that I was an above average performer. Who wants to be expected to do well in school? That means they grade you harder and give you tougher assignments when they can get away with it. That means when you slack off and miss homework or mess up on a quiz, people are disappointed. Still, I never dumbed things down. As much as I hated their expectations, I did nothing to lessen them. If anything, I did my best to keep those expectations alive. Why? Once again, who wants to backtrack?

I set the bar for myself, and when it comes to certain things, I set it pretty damn high. Sometimes it’s real hard to reach it again once its set, but I will reach it. I refuse to lose to that guy in the mirror – what does he have that I don’t? I can do anything he can do better! This feels like a valuable piece of knowledge. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it yet, but it seems like knowing it can only work to my benefit. Maybe this is a new method I can use to motivate myself. Who knows? I’ll have to think more about this, but that’s enough self-discovery for the moment.

I’m sitting here at work working (kind of) and listening to music. I’m listening to internet radio and its playing a variety of music that is similar to songs I told it I like. For most of this morning it was playing a bunch of energetic songs with a lot of funk, the type that get your head bobbing and make parts of your body move on beat involuntarily. I was definitely in the groove. When slow songs came up I would skip them. Until. Lilac Wine by Nina Simone came on and suddenly my whole vibe changed. That song just made me OK with slow music. And then I realized – you have to give credit to anything that has the power to change you. Our moods and likes are constantly changing because we’re human and that’s what humans do, but how many things or people have the power to MAKE you do an instant 180?

Have you ever been dead set on staying out of a relationship and then met someone who made you suddenly decide that the couple thing is the thing to do? Ever felt completely anti-social and against human contact only to end up talking/chilling with a person who makes you want to re-emerge and become part of the world? Have you ever made up your mind about a concept and then heard someone break it down in a way that makes you reverse your position?

A friend of mine says you should always stop and take notice of natural occurrences of the color purple because they’re relatively rare. I say the same for anything that forces you to change. Stop, take notice and give respect where respect is due. Sometimes it takes a lot of power to bring about the smallest change.