Choices and Time for Change..

I’m making another major move in my life and as I think about what my next step is and what I hope is to come, it has made me think about how we look at choices and changes. I’ve witnessed how some people try to make others pay for the choices they have made in their own lives..How is it that someone else should be held accountable for what YOU did or did not decide to do with your life? Or worse yet, how are you going to be mad about what someone else decided to do with theirs? Everyone has to make their own decisions and be able to live with the outcomes of those choices and the changes that could ultimately come as well. If I decide to move to a different location or start a business or broaden my horizons or get additional education or buy a house or fall in love and get married and you don’t, you can’t get mad at me…especially if you have the same opportunity and choose not to take it.  I can admit that I have been guilty of being envious of what others in my immediate circle have obtained or experienced before me but I didn’t begrudge them for that. As a true friend, family member, soror, etc it is my RESPONSIBILITY to be happy for those who are succeeding in life and lift them up and encourage them not break them down. Otherwise, I am not as true as what I am telling them I am. The outpouring of love and support I have gotten from those close to me as I make this next step in my career and life has been great and I wish that as a people we could always do that for each other. How often have we heard someone hate on what someone was doing before they even took the time to congratulate them for taking a step on faith or doing something positive or something they really wanted to do? I bet if you actually counted the number of occurrences in which this happened versus the immediate congratulation the number would be shocking!! When did we as a society become so negative against others doing well? The better question might be, when did we as the African American community become so jaded that we don’t even support one another in businesses or community activism? We sit and complain about how everyone else has a store or restaurant or business in our communities but we either don’t open them ourselves or when one is opened we find every reason in the book not to patronize it (they don’t have what the “other” store has, they “ghetto”, they prices are too high, etc)..Come on now, it’s time for us to be accountable for ourselves and our communities and stop making excuses. If you see something is not right, try to help the people out first by telling them what you think or about some bad experience instead of just talking about them and not even giving them a chance. Ask yourself, if you went to a mainstream store and got bad service or they didn’t have something would you stop going to that store forever? Probably not. Why would we give other people multiple times to treat us any kind of way and still take our money and barely give ourselves 1 time to earn our money? That seems a bit odd don’t you think? I’m from Michigan and I gotta tell you, the Arabs and Chaldeans in Dearborn got things on lock.  Why? Because they own everything there and BUY FROM EACH OTHER. Guess who we buy from in Detroit-Them. One would think that even before the mass exodus at the fall of the auto industry in a city that was majority Black that there would have been more Black Owned Businesses but ironically, I saw more places run by Asians, Arabs and Caucasians than Blacks. At some point we need to stop and look around and say enough is enough. We can’t be upset that other people are succeeding if we aren’t willing to make the choices and changes it takes to do the same. Think about this the next time you get ready to reach into your pocket and decide where to spend your money. We can’t expect others to help and respect us if we don’t help and respect ourselves. Just my two cents J