lessons

Addiction is powerful, if you don’t learn to control it and take back your power. It CAN kill you. It has killed so many and yet has no bias. It shows up in any circle, family or friend. It has no preference.

We ALL have vices. Dark moments hidden in the shadows. But what about those who can’t hide in the shadow. Like DMX. What if we were able to see the magic of the person, but the vulnerability of a human?

Isn’t that exactly what we saw with X? Wasn’t this man a magician who couldn’t tame his inner beast? Don’t we all have that beast inside of us?

A vice can be anything. It is something that you will learn to control or in the end it will kill you. It will stay with you, even when you overcome it. It will be the most vivid vision you carry with you.

Drug addiction, specifically, is a vice that is more powerful than most. Yet, some do pull through, but it takes a lifetime of dedication.

And of course, many die at the hands of these drugs. I remember a saying that “People do drugs, drugs don’t do people.”

Don’t they?

Drugs are chemically compounded to form an invisible hold on our spirit. Drugs tie to our memory, our feelings and never let go. As someone who has battled addiction and watched it take my family, I feel now is an important time to look at the beast for what it is.

Our vice can be our death wish.

For DMX, his vice was a constant battle between his greatness and his defeat. It was something we all watched him struggle with on the sidelines. It is an epic story of a King and the lesson from his demise. He was a lesson. He MUST be a lesson. He was one of the most creative, talented speakers of our time. He was open about his fight. In the end he fought so we would hold onto hope. Please, Don’t let your vice be the reason you don’t see tomorrow.

Don’t use all that toilet paper. Be conscious of how much you consume. We don’t know what lies ahead but what we do know…..a message.

In order to make sense of the chaos, one must find the purpose. For most, it is not the illness that we fear most. It is what is happening all around us.

Everything is closing, everything changing. We look into the news, into our feeds and we watch the world unravel before our eyes. We try to answer the questions from our children in a lighthearted and positive way, yet we find that harder and harder to accomplish.

We can’t help but pay attention to….Well frankly, all of it.

So what does it all mean. What can we do to ease the burden of our anxiety?

I believe it is our duty to be conscious. We knew something like this would face us. We knew we couldn’t keep going like this.

We must look at the feat in front of us, be strong, and remember we are all here to learn. COVID-19 may be the most valuable lesson many us will ever face in this lifetime. Our mothers and fathers, grandfathers and grandmothers, they all had something similar to this. No it has never been so heavy. But we have been heavy. We have been taking and taking, climbing and stepping on our brothers and sisters.

We are humanity and this is a peril. Many of us will make it through this, but the question remains, what will we do different.

The Long Battle we experienced with DMX

What is the message? We ALL know better than this.