Now my respect, I demand it.
"...And I know that if I end this I'll no longer have nothing left..."
- '25 to life' Eminem
***
The hardest part about ultimatums is... the follow through.
I've found my poetic voice once more. Perhaps by pure force... I went to the Poetry and Jazz night upstairs the museum with Sher. Funnily enough, Danielle was there with her students (I haven't seen her in ages). The main poets for the night didn't make it, so they called upon the audience to present pieces. Danielle, as with everyone in the clique from college, is an amazing poet/artist. Sooo... after Sher and Sham's performance, and the crowd was turned upon... We all turned on Danielle and pressured her to go spit something off the top of her head. Of course you know whose voice was the loudest. Thus, as she came off the stage, after doing a lovely impromptu piece, I started scribbling because I knew the next person to be pressured would be me.
It wasn't that bad. I haven't performed since MIGfest (Made in Grenada festival) years ago.
So what does all of this have to do with ultimatums? I'm thinking of them in terms of simplifying life with either or decisions. My drama teacher once told me when faced with a situation and you're stuck with indecisiveness, flip a coin and follow through regardless. Later on, I stumbled upon somewhere online that in actuality the beauty of flipping a coin, is that, in the moment the coin is in the air doing its multiple flips - you already know what you're hoping it to be.
But hope, never suffices. Should it even land on the desired face, it does not mean that anything would truly come to pass the way you'd intend, with the progression of time. Thus, it brings you back to square one - "the follow through regardless."
I remember recently a friend and I were having a discussion about the whole "what's yours is yours/what's meant to be will be" philosophy...and ultimately what we rationalized was that we're in control of our own fate. You can't change how where other people stand, effect their emotions accordingly, and so forth. Rather, you do have control over being explicitly clear where you stand so that others can know how to act accordingly. So that at the very least, you've done your very most.
I think 2009-2011 has served/is serving to show me the lessons of following through. At the heart of everything, it's never really about the things seemingly at the surface. It's never as emotional as people credit it to be. Love isn't the cure all solution to the world's problems. Nor does it never suffice long enough to carry the weight of anything.
What really carries the weight? Commitment. How committed are you to your decision?
You want to move out - so you did - and it's tougher than you expected... How committed are you, to seeing it through?
You're having relationship stress and there's someone else that makes the world look easier, but you've packed in years already, how committed are you to riding the wave when the water gets rough?
You're having a tough time managing your classes, but you picked them nuntheless and the option of dropping a course or two introduces itself, how committed are you to dig deep within yourself and make that grade?
How committed are you to pursuing your dreams? Making them your life's reality? For every aforementioned situation is ideally, a dream. How committed are you?
I guess... respect and commitment go hand in hand as well. How much respect do you have for yourself? The people around you? Etc.
So therefore, what I'm trying to say is, make a decision and commit to it. Then deal with the consequences, make another decision and commit to it. Deal with those consequences. And so forth. Hindsight is 50/50 but once you're making active decisions, you're actively moving. It's easier to give commentary about your journey when you're actually on one, rather than staying within the safety of unsatisfying certainty and never venturing out, trying something new.
Life, it's that simple. We complicate it.
Shelli out.
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:) <3
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