Forum/Discussions

Greetings Family:

Day 83 Challenge: “Suicide & DBD –Death By Distortion/Disconnects/Denial”

Today’s Opportunity:
Look/Listen/Reflect through meditative space, readings, and music on: “Why do we black people choose –rapidly and decisively or slowly and subtly –to kill ourselves?” Be sober and clear: Avoid all alcohol, weed, or drug-induced euphoria. It’s September’s “First Friday”: Let’s bring our best spirits and not best, bottled spirits to this self-inspection and development work.

Identify at least 5 black suicide casualties. Include purportedly wealthy and comfortable, celebrity entertainers, athletes, and music industry moguls. Start a 2^nd, “black suicide watch” list: Identify at least 5 people known to you that strike you as suicide suspects, potential at risk.  
Notice who’s stumbling and bumbling along –aimless, doubtful, sick, dispirited, depressed, confused, anxious, furious, delusional, disrespectful, hustling, alcohol- and drug-dependent, lonely, bitter, isolated, devalued, tired, sick of being tired, and nearly devoid of hope.
Examine the two  “suicide accomplished” and “suicide watch” lists. Do you detect a pattern? Imagine an honest conversation among the people on both lists: What do you think you’d hear about their challenges, circumstances, revival dilemmas, and choices? What lessons do you take from their “conversation”, painful stories, and troubling realities?

Your Life/Legacy is Calling You: Ask: If you could be granted only 1 selection, what character attribute, deed, achievement, or service footprint would you most like to define your life, legacy, and how you’ll be remembered? Keep your answer close. Be clear. Be substantial. Be grateful for the opportunity to share the gifts and respond to the call of your life.

Sponsoring Thought: 
Maafa positions us for violent captivity, degradation, and collusive control. It disrupts our natural capacities to think clearly and collaborate constructively. It casts us as super-deficient, unworthy, and wretched –the worst of the irredeemably “untouchable” worst. Maafa, Swahili for “disaster”, demands that we swallow deep distortions, disconnects, and denial –through life paths, options, and choices that are nothing short of disasters. Our suffering, confusion, despair, disempowerment, and ultimate self-destruction go hand in hand.
Maafa offers us several “fatal attractions” –both painful “meat grinder” magnets and more comfortable, crippling “traps”:

1) I’m self-righteously superior and won’t let anyone show me a better way;
2) I’m addicted, comfortably self-absorbed, and deserving relative to getting what I want when and how I want it;
3) I’m cleverly above/immune to principles and law;
4) I’m significant due to what I earn, spend, and have to show;
5) I’m powerful because I have X person, Y thing, or “slaves” of my own;
6) I’m visible because I’m, not a “goodie goodie” sellout, but a feared and furious “volcano”; and
7) I’m loved/renown because I show up spotless, perform error-free, rock the party but not the boat, and enjoy the pretense and high regard of “powerful” people; on and on.  

The “traps” list grows exponentially and delivers “damage” cumulatively and interdependently to redirect us towards cloudy, self-serving endeavor, fantasy lifestyles, and ultimate self-destruction. Folks stagger and swagger onto the Maafa stage, demanding/hoping to try on and take on Maafa-approved “identities” –looking for respect and true community through the fantasy lens of special privileges and treatment, $$$ and material possessions, and excess displays/airs of “bravado invincibility”.

No one, however, beats the Law of the Boomerang: The “good times” inevitably spiral downward, health profiles begin to fade, creative juices shift toward depletion, the mind senses shame, decline, and the regretful weight of feeling trapped/hooked/off stride. Self-judgment and panic declare “war”: We don’t think we can afford to lose all the key people and treasured things we always hoped to get and thought we had forever secured. “When life seems not worth living and nothing seems to be going right”, we show up on Maafa’s stage ashamed and embarrassed –“hearts broken”, “nothing more to show”, and “dreams/delusions shattered” beyond hope and repair.

That’s when Death itself starts to call: Giving up and giving in; pawning dreams; surrendering all hope and the will to fight; defiantly “showing them”, “making them pay”, “taking painful matters in hand to kill the pain” –these thoughts lobby/pose as truly attractive options. 
Life also and forever calls. Heed the Boomerang: Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute, know that we can be healthy again. Look around: There’s still Light in the world. Hug our future, the children in your closest care. Alive or Dead? Life, Death: What call are you now ready to take? 

Re-Minder:
“You can’t break me, ‘cause you didn’t make me.” Denzel Washington, “The Hurricane”
 
“I dance with freedom as my friend
As wild shadows recede pure light shows me myself
Unadorned, unencumbered
Shattered myths and illusions burst forth bright with my birth
Flash fearless fancies in my face
I am naked in my knowing
Faithful to my truth
Dancing on the edge of my awakening.”  Andrea M. Edmonds, She Comes Clear
 
Rest in Power Chris Lighty and countless other black men and fathers who suffer in silence.

We are One -- Always.

Like today's Challenge? Let us know.  We welcome your thoughts, comments, reactions, etc.!  Send them to contactus@blackfatherchallenge.com or post on or blog page: http://blackfatherchallenge.wordpress.com

Sign the Pledge. Share it with fellow fathers! Find all Challenge Actions @ www.blackfatherchallenge.com


“It’s time that Black men begin to celebrate their positive accomplishments, dissect the challenges, reconnect, and chart new victories; as we identify, rally around, and pass along the next set of powerful, life development keys to each other and the next generation,”says Dr. Thomas A. Gordon, a licensed psychologist, strategic advisor, and corporate leadership expert with TAGA Consulting who is spearheading the 2012 Black Fatherhood Challenge