On Generations: "Elevate" - Part 13 of ...

'Cause I win, over and over again
Battlin' evil, I'm hopin' to win

I recently rewatched Black Panther again and one of the scenes that stuck out to me was when Killmonger got introduced to the council of elders in the movie. He walks in and says “Y'all sittin’ up here comfortable. Must feel good.”

After spending two years in Wilmington, DE and moving back to the northern Virginia area, it's a line that I take to heart. Northern Virginia is an area of the country that is the definition of comfortable - literally in the top 10 wealthiest counties of the country to live. While that doesn't mean that everyone is rich, it means that everyone is rich compared to many other parts of the country; compared to many other parts of the world. And things that are a problem in another city are not nearly a problem to the same extent in Northern Virginia.

As an example, there was a recent grant application for businesses that were impacted by COVID. The grant offered helped businesses and would not need to be repaid. The county had the resources to explain the application process in multiple languages, enough resources to announce it on multiple platforms, and the luxury to use funds likely from the stimulus package not applied to assist every other service that could have been impacted from COVID. A lot of other areas of the country still have businesses that are struggling but that's on top of every other problem that existed before COVID took hold early last year.

The reason I bring this up now is that living in Wilmington isn't necessarily comfortable. Where we lived we definitely had comforts and that's not what I'm trying to say--I'm saying that the discomfort of others was much more apparent in Wilmington than it will be in Northern Virginia. I'm deciding to go back to the DC area because to me it's the best way we can set up our family for future stability and opportunities. It doesn't mean it's a permanent move but a place to take the next step in our careers. What I don't want to happen is for us to forget that those with less than us who have relative amounts of discomfort and striving just to get to the next day, don’t have the luxury to worry about things like a career. The luxury of choosing to go to an office. The luxury of choosing to work remotely. The luxury of deciding on investments over other opportunities. The luxury of choosing an apartment over a house or keeping two vehicles instead of one. I don't want to forget that housing choices, transportation choices, work style choices are not even in the thoughts of many people in this country. Spending a year to set ourselves up a little bit more is a first step in a process to address all of these problems.

I don't want a different version of myself to look in on the choices I made and a few years down the road and say, “Man y'all sittin up here comfortable.” I want that version of myself to come back and say there's so much less discomfort here. Someone must have been working hard to make it that way.

The other thing that happened this week was seeing my brother perform his second original album called Generations. The songs on the album were very specific to his experience growing up black in a predominantly white and immigrant town. Two songs in particular spoke to the uniqueness of this story. The first, Slide Home describes our hometown of Westerly, Rhode Island and the experience of living there with its positives and like being close to the beach, being home to good Italian food, and a place where people support you as long as you've grown up with them. It's an experience that hasn't been put into writing very often and at least for me in high school, I was not equipped to describe some of the discomfort I felt growing up. Or more accurately I didn't have the perspective to see the limitations and mindset and education that were part of my day-to-day life.

The second song of note from my brother's album is a song called Generations. And this song directly relates to that scene in Black panther. Killmonger returns to ask what more the council could be doing. I often have the same question that my grandfather would ask were he to come back and see his family and heirs making decisions toward their own future. Would he ask us if we could be doing more? Or would he ask us if we realize how comfortable we've gotten. I don't think he would ever go to the extreme of promoting violence and restoring black greatness like Killmonger suggested, but I do think he would relate to how much we have to offer as a people and a family that we're holding close to our own well-being. Maybe our lives could be a little bit better, but that's at the expense of millions of others whose lives could be materially better. 

That's the feeling and perspective I don't want to lose moving back to northern Virginia. My own relatives have cut their lives short whether through medical problems or systemic inequities or direct violence and my brother and I have been given the choice, the opportunity, the responsibility to do more with what our prior generations have given to us. My brother ended the song with the quote that his “only inheritance, the knowledge that I can do anything with education.” I echo that exact sentiment that I don't expect any sort of material wealth from my immediate family but I am eternally thankful for them blessing my brother and I with the chance of education and what that can mean for the future.

I want the generations 5 branches down from me to wonder if I think they've done enough and not the other way around.

(Note: The opening lyrics are from the song “Elevate” which is the framework for my posts from 2019 onward. Click back a few posts for more context. I chose to compare Erik Killmonger’s image to my brother as the post relates. You can find Big Lux’s songs on Spotify and bigluxviolin.com.)

On Honor: "Elevate" - Part 12 of ...

I jump off this building to save these civilians
My strength and my honor is trusted by children
I'm ready and willing to fight all these villains

15 years ago today, I celebrated graduating from a top univeristy in New Jrsey. I’ll give you two guesses on which one it was.

In terms of honor, we ended every exam by signing this statement

"I pledge my honor that I have not violated the Honor Code during this examination."

I think one of my biggest strengths is that I follow rules. This is a blessing - I follow rules to learn music, to play instruments, to draw, to cook, to take a test. My best skills come from following rules. And this is a non-blessing. Rules are, by their definition, limiting. By adhering to rules, you are meeting someone else’s expectation of the right way of doing things. And in following rules, you may create something new, but you will not create something novel. At some point there is someone who creates the rules. These are the people who have the real power.

I know there were classmates who signed this pledge after looking up an extra answer online when taking a computer exam, or who had a few additional notes on their allowed scrap of paper. I don’t fault them for this, and I don’t regret upholding the honor code in everything I turned in. These same people are the ones who now have senior positions at hedge funds, venture capital firms, and companies like SpaceX, Google and Facebook.

I do regret following rules like NDAs and non-competes when others ignored them. I regret not using my own knowledge of companies or trends that I rightly experienced to not gain a personal advantage, whether through investing or strategizing. I regret not taking better advantage of the network this university in New Jersey has allowed me access to. I viewed this incorrectly as not “earning” an interview, or access to a job, or an opportunity at a company. I made rules for myself that weren’t there.

After 15 years, I’m done honoring systems that have been in place to limit opportunities. I’m done honoring rules that are nonsensical or from systemic racism. I’m done honoring my own self-limiting rules.

That is the honor code I want to uphold for my next 15 years. There are people who deserve an opportunity, who deserve a better chance at health, at transportation, at climate justice, and the best thing I can do is to honor the privilege I have to do as much as I can in these areas. Creating companies, hiring people, writing books, earning wealth. I will honor the rules by creating new ones for people who had no say in the current existing rules.