As I approach the end of the first day of 2010 I am struck by how much I have learned over the past year about myself and those around me. Every year brings an opportunity to grow and to change, and often times growth and change comes from pain and loss. I am reading a book on leadership called "Love Leadership" and I am reflecting on how I have grown this past year from loss of certain things I value and the reality that those loses bring.
I lost this year the childhood of my eldest son. He is now 18, but more importantly, he is a father. While Vanessa his daughter is a gift from God to him and to me, I lost the boy that was going college, meeting girls, exploring the world and wanting to live in Atlanta or New York. Because, that boy is gone forever, and the responsiblity of being a father, living on your own, supporting another two people, at such a young age robs him of the things most boys his age would have. While he is lost to me as a free spirited boy, he has come to me now as a man who is handling his situation with the grace and commitment I find from very few men in my life.
He, at 18, is the primary care giver to his daughter and unlike many men even in my generation, he is more involved in her life then half the fathers I know. Unfortunately in our society and most of the world in which I live and work, he does and other young men like him , do not get credit for what they do. Instead, society focused on labeling and categorizing and because they are focused on his mistakes and "lost" dreams, they, even his own father, has written him off as a lost cause. I refuse to write him and the young men of color our society off! If we are to be defined by who we are at 18 or 19 years of age, then many of us should have given up long ago. And if we have to live in box or category that society defines for us based on standards that we did not set and were not given a chance to set, then I would not be where I am right now and should have given up at birth. However, I have learned again this year that blessings come in the challenges we face and that beauty comes from the most unexpected places.
He, like every one of us, is a work in progress and I can only hope to be an oasis from the harsh reality he is bombarded with every single day. Have you been an oasis to someone in your life? Can you be that oasis in 2010?
I was reminded in 2009 that I must stick to the values and integrity that I hold dear. I must continue to believe in my life style and my values and that leadership can grow out of those too. My syle of leadership is not wrong or misguided it is actually a style that takes courage and work to maintain and will be most effective for me in the long run. My values, although foreign to the environment in which I work, is just that foreign, but not wrong! I am destined for great things and this is a path I must take to achieve them.
Lastly, I learned that I am the only one who will put me first in my career and in my personal life. I do not mean first for material things but first as far as taking care of me and relying on me. I must take my health and mental welfare and put it first, because without it I have nothing. I am blessed with people who rely on me to take care of them. I also realize that I cannot and should not allow myself to take second place in the lives of the men in my life. I am there for them and they need to be there for me, otherwise I am not living up the standard I set for myself! If I do not respect me, then no one will.
I know that am blessed to be where I am with those people in my life who love me for me. Those same people and accept the struggles I overcome as a positive or necessary aspect of life but understand that they do not define me. Those who choose to judge and base themselves on who they know, the title they carry or the amount of moeny they make, can lose it all and like right now in history...have no real place to go. Beauty comes from integrity. So, how beautiful are you based on this standard? How beautiful are those that you surround yourself with? And if this is not your standard, who defines the standard of beauty for you? Consider all this has we move into 2010.
