We welcome you readers back to another double dose edition of the one and only The Beat Within. It’s OT once again coming at you guys live from the land the quakes and shakes, and the hot volcanic rocks of Managua, Nicaragua.
I’m blessed and tasked once again to share some positive insight with our Beat Readers and writers, so let’s get to it ladies and gentlemen. As always, I love to touch on one of our weekly writing prompts to drop my two cents on how I feel about the topic and this week the topic that kept ringing the bells in my ears was the “Stubborn” topic.
Boy we had a lot of great writing on that topic which inspired me to go ahead and throw my own spin on it. Stubborn, what does that mean exactly? We all can think of the words that come quickly to our mind, like hard-headed, knucklehead, doesn’t listen, ignorant. But stubborn also has it’s good qualities, like, determined, persistent, relentless, tenacious and so forth. There are always two sides of the coin, and I believe I read several pieces on both meanings, which were great.
Many of them were related to being determined and I personally loved reading and seeing the perseverance from the youth. The majority of the writing was personalized, and I loved the determination and tenacity behind the writing.
Let us all be stubborn when it comes to reaching our goals, loving our family and making positive contributions to our communities. So, I say that to say this: Don’t let your stubbornness blind you from the truth. See, we are all raised differently. We all come from different ethnic backgrounds, Latino, Black, Asian, White, Pacific Islander, Native American, and so forth, and that of course comes with the types of food we like, music we like, and certain styles and culture.
I will take it even deeper, depending on where you were raised, let’s say a good neighborhood or in the suburbs, you have a better chance at not becoming a statistic, not getting into gangs, and will probably go to college. However, that doesn’t exempt you from experiences challenges in life, like stress, insecurities, school, work, you name it. In the poorer neighborhoods you get to see the grimy and gritty, and even though not everyone is an accomplice and not everyone is considered to be bad, it is a lot rougher, and there are more drugs, alcohol, violence and crime.
The facts are the facts. Beliefs are beliefs. You are not going to change the facts with a belief, let alone your belief in particular. Let’s not confuse the two. But most people don’t change their beliefs, even when presented with the obvious facts.
When we are raised a certain way, by a certain household, or sometimes we are raised in the streets, or by social media content, we are essentially being programed to think a certain way.
There are those fortunate few of us that branch out and go to different schools, move different cities, communities, even different countries and make friends with people from all walks of life.
Today, we know what goes on in Mexico, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Australia, Gaza, Africa, India and so forth. Even the small little countries which are tourist destinations, we’ve all seen reels, and YouTube clips of what it’s like to live over there. But the problem is what we think we know and what we actually know are often two different things.
It seems like I’m dragging my point out for so long, but I want to put it into context because nowadays, both young adults, OG’s, and middle aged people are a part of the problem, because information is so accessible, everybody thinks they know everything.
There’s always a conspiracy theory behind a political action or acts of violence and it seems sad that we all are feed these sandwiches of straight lies, and tacos of misinformation and we just swallow them whole.
No one is being held accountable, and all this misinformation affects the way we think, our beliefs and the way we go about thinking that only our beliefs count. It also leads to us thinking that we can’t be held accountable, when our beliefs could lead us to commit crimes. We hurt others not just physically but emotionally, financially and even spiritually.
For example, we can all agree, and I believe in this mature audience, that no one is going to say, “I’m perfect.” We are all very far from perfect, that’s myself included.
But there is a stubborn type of mentality that can have us think that way. When someone tells you that you have anger issues, it’s probably because they’ve seen you blow up, or you’ve demonstrated something to them that shows you can’t control your anger.
When someone tells you have a substance abuse issue with alcohol, with weed or any type of drug, then it’s something that you should evaluate. When someone points out to you that you are handling a certain situation wrong, you should not be stubborn, and you should open your ears to listen to the feedback. We get so closeminded at times that we don’t want to listen to no one but me, myself and I.
Sometimes it can be the quite opposite. We tend to listen to others tell us to do something that we know is wrong, but yet we do it because we trust that person more than we can trust our very own judgement.
“If I don’t know that my behavior is wrong, I’ll never attempt to fix it.” This quote was stated by a BWO writer out of Stockton (shout out to my guy, you know who you are). Ladies and gentlemen, this is a fact. You will never be able to change, mature or grow, if you yourself don’t realize it when you are making a mistake or when you’re doing something wrong.
For some of us, it takes a lengthy sentence, or the judge telling you in court that this is your final chance to change. When I decided to change, all I had to do was look at how much pain I caused my family because of my actions. Sometimes being stubborn means being greedy and only thinking of ourselves, instead of thinking about those that love us dearly.
See it’s okay to be stubborn at times, but you have to know when to separate when your stubbornness is affecting you from reaching your true potential.
I’m here to tell you that we all need stop and take the time to reflect and look at the cold hard truth. It’s time we take a long hard look at ourselves and dig deep within to see what we are doing wrong and what can we do to make it better.
Let’s make our mothers proud. Let’s make our teachers proud. Let’s make ourselves proud. Let us all be stubborn when it comes to reaching our goals, loving our family and making positive contributions to our communities. Let’s extend a hand to those that we see being stubborn and making the same mistake. Let’s remember to give them grace and help them elevate so they too can reach their true potential.
By transforming your life, it could be all the inspiration someone else may need to make that positive change in their life. Each one, teach one. We are all in this together. I believe in y’all. OT is signing out with the utmost love and respect to everyone of y’all.
Long live David Inocencio…and The Beat keeps going and going…