What Is Your Passion?

What is your passion, what drives you?
Makes you laugh with glee when it goes well,
And that you would do for free, without any accolades or recognition at all,
But will absolutely knock you off your feet when it doesn’t go well…
Will make you as mad as it made you glad…
If you don’t feel this way about anything, then you probably don’t have a passion,
And even when it feels like a passion, if is done for glory then it is probably not a passion either, it is something you are passionate about, and there is a difference…
I am passionate about reading, love to read…
But I don’t get twisted about books the way many do…
I purchase what I love and enjoy and when I support a new author and their work doesn’t move me, I simply don’t purchase anything else,
And I usually won’t tell people not to purchase it,
To each her own…one woman’s elixir is another woman’s poison…
I am passionate about writing…
Have loved expressing myself by writing since I was a young girl who lived inside her head more than anywhere else, and loved it there…
But I know that I will always write, if I never sell another book, I will write and my life will continue to be good…
My Passion however is something else altogether,
The emancipation of young people is my Passion, particularly Black youth…
It is extraordinarily important to me that our youngsters receive the proper tools in order to compete, and while education tops that list, I am a realist and know that in American 28% of all Americans graduate from college, and amongst Black folks it’s considerably less…so what we are left with is teaching kids how to earn a living, be it college, trade school, apprenticeship programs, whatever…
Not only that we are going to have to stop accepting, teenage pregnancies as okay, and unsafe sexual practices as okay…we are going to have to hold these young people accountable and if we don’t want to we are going to have to get out of the way of those who do…because I kid you not, a young girl with a couple of babies by age eighteen will not be able to compete in the way that she should, a young man with a couple of child support orders by age twenty will never get ahead…too busy trying to get by…and a young person with an incurable illness….well folks mother doesn’t even have to address that one…
We all seem to have taken a huge shot of anesthesia,
We are no longer shocked when we see young pregnant girls.
Or when we know young men who are eighteen with a couple of girls who have babies for him…we seem to take in all in stride and keep it moving and only a hearty few will even become engaged in the dialogue. I guess it is for the many reasons mentioned above, it isn’t sexy and there is no glory in doing that kind of work…
Amazingly we are down for a cause but it seems that the best causes are those removed from us. People supporting Jena 6 is a beautiful thing, but many of those folks who traveled far and wide, probably have many in their communities, on their doorsteps who would benefit greatly from that kind of PASSION and commitment…
And many times we can help in small ways…sometimes I chuckle at what people take from my books, most people touch on the love triangle, but I have yet to have most people address the underlying story lines about mentoring, community service, those who have much giving back…the way these people while going through their own personal struggles are never too tired or too wrapped up in what they are doing to care about the children…what is up with that?
This is all food for thought….just the Ramblings of a Do or Die Mentor…
I have earned my Mama Deep moniker, lately...grinning...

Love and Blessings…
angelia