A simple conversation can truly impact how you look at yourself and your life in ways you wouldn’t have thought so before, and 2 conversations really put me into perspective last week.

The objective in life, as we all know, is to live it to our fullest potentials if we have the ability to. There are so many things that can happen during the course of our journey through it, but because we’re human, and we’re built to take any challenge, we manage to look at those obstacles without (or with some) hesitation and still manage to hurdle past them. After we’ve hurdled past, what’s next? Well, to continue reaching where you want to be. This is where sometimes we can be so head-on about getting to where we have to be, because we know what we want, but the truth is, we may have a plan for how we want to get it, but life may have different plans for us.

Kendrick Lamar’s song “Barbed Wire” talks about a series of individuals who have some rough times in their life but do what they can to ensure that they make it past their” barbed wires.” It’s something that a lot of us can relate to (yet instilling another reason why he’s one of my favourite rappers), and it didn’t hit me until this morning.

“Have you ever felt like, like you never get life?
Like you never get right? Sort of like a black sheep
Back down, backing out your dreams like some bad sleep
Chasing for the win but you never win the track meet
Oh, what a cold world for a broke nigga, it’s bitter
and life’s a bitch, don’t hit women so I bit her”

It’s one thing to live our lives with a purpose, as I’ve talked about before, but when doing that, a lot of us forget to ENJOY life as we live it, because whether we die at the end of 2012 (if you believe that at all), or if something (God forbid) happens to you, wouldn’t you want to look at your life and say that you enjoyed it for what it was anyways? My problem is that I can’t really say that, and I know I’m not alone with that.

We want to do so much, but sometimes lack the time/expense to do said things. We look at the fact that we have bills and we have other obligations to attend to, and yes, working is important, but so is enjoying your life. Why kill yourself over a 9-5 to continue living the same routine on a daily basis?

My mother always encouraged me to get out in the world because you never know what can find you when you’re there. You have to think outside of the box, step beyond your boundaries, and take chances in life, because, we really do have 1 opportunity to make it right, and all of those years we have now, we shouldn’t have to look back and say “If I coulda, woulda, shoulda,” just like the old Lou Rawls song. We can’t throw time away, and I know I’ve talked about dreams, goals and ambitions in previous vents, but this merely instilling that we have to enjoy ourselves in the process. My mom’s the single most inspiring person to me in my life, so whenever she gives me any sort of advice, I have to adhere to it.

My aunt Simone (I basically call her my aunt because she’s known me for 18 years), has always given me good advice, and I haven’t listened, stupidly, there’s no excuse about that. But what she told me last week really stuck to me and I had to look at my life, like “Damn, for real huh?” She said, to get right to the point, life happens. Bills happen, and other things that we’re accustomed to doing happen. She said that I can’t let work tie me down here so that I won’t enjoy it. I’ve got to live, go to Vegas, have a stupid weekend, but yet memorable. One thing that really caught me was that she said that I need more “remember that time…” essentially meaning that I need to have more experiences, which will lead to connecting more with people and just looking back on life with more positive memories than negative, because right now, that’s not the case at all.

I really have to thank her, and my mom for really enforcing that in me, because it’s true, you have to live a little, because you could benefit a lot. I just want to share the message, because I know there are a lot of people who feel stuck in their own lives, but just go outside of what you know, and maybe you’ll find something that can significantly impact your life in ways you never would have known; this is what I know now, so I’m glad that I can continue on with life with a broader perspective than what I thought I had. Steve Jobs really said it best in his classic Stanford Convocation speech:

Stay Hungry
Stay Foolish

That’s My Word & It STiXX