There is absolutely no excuse for one to ever stop learning or growing.
In fact, there is absolutely no excuse for one to ever stop allowing their mind to be transformed or stretched by new ideas, concepts, or revelations.
This is true whether you are in the pit of a prison or in a palatial paradise.
The truth remains that as long as there is air in your lungs and blood flowing through your veins, there is work to do. Work that needs to be done.
My hope is that we no longer underestimate what we have to contribute to society and thus the world whether inside or outside of prison.
I have met some of the most amazing, intriguing, the most free and liberated people inside of prison. While I have met some of the most constricted, bound, fearful people tormented by their own mental prisons outside of correctional facilities.
But wherever you are or whatever state you are in (mental, emotional, geographical) there is greatness in you. There is a great leader in you waiting to be awakened.
There are leaders walking amongst us today both women and men, all with the ability to lead and even effect great change. But, are crippled by fear and self-doubt.
Fearful that if they do something great they will awkwardly stand out.
Or, if the speak up no one will listen.
Well I tell you this, none of us are meant fit in because we have all been made to stand out. To embrace our uniqueness and the variety in which we were all perfectly created in.
Sadly too many of these leaders remain frozen in contemplation at the crossroads of life trying to decide whether to move with the crowd or trival the often empty and scarcely populated road less traveled.
They are stuck asking themselves can they really make a difference? Can they really effect the future generations to come?
The future truly is in our hands and the future is now!
WE ARE THE FUTURE… and this chapter of history can’t be written without us.
The negative cultures of society are being glorified on t.v. while those who stand up against these said cultures are being demonized and villified, FOR WHAT? Deciding to take a stand! While others just recline back sitting around doing nothing about the same issues they all too frequently are complaining about.
If you don’t stand for anything you will fall for everything. If you stand for nothing what do you think you will get?
And the survey says…DING! DING! DING!… you are absolutely right, what you will get exactly is NOTHING!
Yet, we just accept this culture as it is and wonder how we set ourselves up for failure?
Because we accept anything, stand for nothing, while hoping for something to change or somebody to come and change it.
Stop waiting for somebody and be that somebody!
We can change this!
The process may be slow at first but with persistent and constant pressure we can change this.
Pressure does in fact bust pipes but it also produces diamonds. It is the unrealized diamonds that complain about the pressure because the diamonds that know what they are embrace the pressure as that pressure is what forms them.
Before we can even consider this we must figure out first how to get out of our own way? How to stop this crab-in-the-bucket mentality and bring an end to this self-sabotaging behaviors.
We can be leaders of men and women and not just leaders of boys and girls. To do this we must elevate our level of thinking (beyond that of children) and elevate the level of thinking of those around us.
By doing this we will stop being disillusioned by seemingly insurmountable problems but will instead move about in search for solutions.
By doing this we will stop just accepting our circumstances but realize we are more than our circumstances and have the ability to do something about them.
Staring out of my window, I am witnessing a paradigm shift.
Furthermore as I look within myself, I smile. Because I know the road ahead of me is tumultuous and I am on the frontlines helping to lead the charge in this fight, but I am not alone. I HAVE HOPE!
I do in fact see where things are today, but I have seen what hope can produce in the lives of the hopeless.
If we take care of our responsibilities as individuals, we will soon learn of the power of a unified collective.
They who look outside dreams, but they who look within awaken.
I leave you with this thought from the archives of my own journal. Words I wrote to myself in one of the darkest hours of my life, “A dream with hope can never die, a dream without hope is dead already.”
Cyril Walrond
DOC #309756
