We are knee deep in Summer, yet the start of school is right around the corner! Where does the time go? We certainly hope you readers are doing well, staying healthy, while preparing for the upcoming fall season!? If you have been following the news it certainly appears to be yet another challenging season, as we are still dealing with COVID and new variants. We encourage all of you to continue to wear your masks, wash your hands and be mindful of people’s space. We are hearing of too many good people who are fully vaccinated and are still testing positive. We are far from out of the woods, so let’s do our part and beat COVID.
The Beat Within continues…online and in person. We also can’t thank you writers who reach out to us independently with your submissions, thank you. It is truly a team effort, so another big thanks to all our community partners in making our program a success. Now allow us to pass the keyboard to our long time colleague and friend, OT, who will take this editorial note home. OT!
We would like to welcome you readers back to another double dose, 26.29/30, edition of the one and only The Beat Within. This is the only magazine where everybody gets to express themselves freely without any hostile or negative comments aimed at your stories, your truths and your struggles. First off, I would like to extend a warm embrace to all you readers out there. This is OT reporting to you live from the hot climate of Managua, Nicaragua.
I’m going to go ahead and tackle on one of the subjects of being lucky and unlucky, because many of you wrote on that subject and brought up some very interesting points. A lot of you who wrote about creating your own luck, and many of you even said that there was karma involved and said that whatever energy you put out, is the same type of energy you will receive in return.
I totally agree with that sentiment. Whether it’s being lucky or unlucky there’s always a flip side to the coin for each one. Now, when I’m speaking about the term luck, I’m not going to include lucrative ideas like winning the lottery or winning a raffle.
First, I’m going to start off by saying that we’re all lucky at this very moment because even if you’re in a situation you don’t like (like incarcerated) or even if you and your family are currently going through a challenge, if you’re reading this, consider yourself lucky and blessed to be alive. Life is all about confronting challenges and obstacles. Some of us have it harder than others, but many of us, if not all, always have it hard.
Now, you must think to yourself, what does living a hard life have to do with being lucky? Well, I’m going to speak a little bit from personal experience. At the moment, I would like to say that I consider myself lucky and unlucky. I’m not going to repeat my story all over, because many of you guys know a little bit of how I ended up in Nicaragua after doing almost five years in the federal prison system. Here’s the unlucky me talking right now. When I was done with my prison term, I thought I would be able to return to my family. Let me rewind a little bit and let me go ahead and throw a pity party on myself.
I struggled all of my life, since I was a young buck. When I was 2, 3 and 4, we didn’t have much food here in Nicaragua because we were still going through a civil war in the 1980’s. I didn’t have that many toys, maybe not even any toys, as far as I remember. Between my mom and dad constantly fighting and fist fighting with each other, between the civil war, where people were getting killed, and then migrating to the United States, everything has been a challenge. I had to deal with learning a new lifestyle, new language, being discriminated on by my peers because I didn’t speak English right.
I had to deal with racism and discrimination on all levels. Then I had to deal with gangs, drugs, getting jumped, getting stabbed, getting shot at, and then shot. I went through a very dark period in my life, not just once, but numerous times. My, mom eventually re-married and was in another abusive relationship. History kept repeating itself in my life, as it sure does in the lives of many because it is a cycle.
When I decided to fully embrace the gang lifestyle, I was at war with my enemies. I lost many homeboys throughout my life, at one point it got so heavy that I lost 8 friends in less than one year. History kept repeating itself year after year it seemed. Now this pity party is not meant for me to vent about anything, because now that I’m 36 years old, I know that there are certain things that you can control and certain things that you can’t, and that’s where that term “luck” comes into play.
My point here is that luck always has a flip side of the coin. If you’ve had bad luck, you had good luck as well. Now, everything I’ve been through in my life, all the challenges, obstacles, the struggle, I’m lucky to be here alive to be writing this to you all. I’m blessed. Not everyone makes it through the struggle.
How many people do you know who’ve died from stab wounds, from car accidents, gun violence? How many people have we lost to the prison system for drugs, robberies and being involved in the street life? Let’s fast forward today, just look at how many people have died from COVID! Over 630,000 folks, just in the United States alone! My grandpa died from COVID, eight of my neighbors died, My girl’s grandma died from COVID in May and, my girl’s cousin died from COVID two months later, and he was young.
So, what is luck? What is being unlucky? We can sit here and take a look at our lives and think about all the luck we had, and all the luck we didn’t have. We’ve all had our fair share of unfortunate breaks (bad luck) but also will have our fair share of good breaks (good luck).
Nowadays, I spend my time doing positive things, instead of reverting back to the things that I was doing that was bringing me my bad luck. Karma? When I was doing negative things, being in the streets, slanging drugs, packing guns, hitting licks, yeah, the money was good, but shortly thereafter something bad happened, whether that’s me getting locked up, my homies getting locked up, somebody getting shot, or just problems in my household. Karma?
You have to stick to doing the things that you need to be doing like: getting your education, getting a job to help support yourself or your family, starting thinking about your career or what you want to do in the future so you don’t make it a career out of coming in and out of jail.
Again, Karma. If you do positive things in life ladies and gentlemen, then you will get that back ten-fold. Sometimes there will be blessings in disguises where you don’t realize it is a blessing until you look back on it some years later, being locked up could be one of them for many.
For me, if I never would’ve got locked up, I never would’ve met The Beat Within. I never would’ve met Dave (the founder), I never would’ve met my Beat colleagues, Michael Kroll, Alison, Lisa, or any of you guys up in Santa Clara County that I get to talk with every Thursday, (Jav, Ant, Del Rio, Martin shout out to you guys,) this piece of writing would’ve never manifested into existence…
…I never wanted to come to Nicaragua and leave my home (San Francisco) and be away from my daughters, my nieces, nephews, sisters, grandma, aunts, uncles, my mom, and all my friends out there in the Bay Area, but sometimes to get to where you want to go in life, you have to do the things you necessarily don’t want to do.
Everybody wants to be physically fit, but to get in shape, you need to work out every day. Everybody wants to play sports, but do you have the time to work on your skill for hours, everyday? Everybody wants to rap, but are you really going to work on your craft, go to the studio and record that song, everyday?
Me, I consider myself lucky and blessed to be where I am at today. I still have a long road ahead of me. I still wake up and go through the struggle. But, as unlucky as I’ve been, and we’ve all been, you have to admit, that if start putting just a little bit more positive energy into your life, your luck just might change. Don’t let history keep repeating itself. Create your own force of positive energy and tackle life and its challenges like a shark in the sea devouring its prey. Don’t do it alone. Ask for help if you need to. So, am I lucky? Matter of fact, I do consider myself lucky, and blessed. How about you?
One love to everyone going through the struggle. OT is signing out with the utmost respect and love for every single one of you ladies and gentlemen. Stay strong and motivated!
Thank you OT, we are extremely lucky to have you as a friend and colleague. We appreciate all you give to The Beat Within family. Thank you, readers of The Beat Within, we wish you the best of luck moving forward with your lives. Please keep us posted, we’d love to stay in touch with you. Always remember, your story, your life matters. Take care and see you all down the road!