From Gangster Rap to Ordinary Sparks... (Where Is Your Life Headed?)

Hi there everyone!!

My life was so, so different, when I was 14 years old... I remember sitting in a subway car on my way home from grade nine. I had an 88% average and I was making good money at my job as a computer programmer, yet I was depressed out of my mind! I wasn't in a rush to get home -- I would stay on the subway for hours, not really caring about the day, or caring about who I was, or caring about where I was going. My eyes would be closed, my head would be leaning against the subway car's window, and my walkman would be playing lyrics of rappers such as The Ghetto Boys, 2 Live Crew, or NWA.

Where was my life headed? I didn't know at the time...

My ethics were so, so different, when I was 14 years old... Life seemed cruel and unfair to me, so I sought refuge in an underground world of technology. I operated a B.B.S. (the communication technology before the Internet popularized) where we traded pirated software, distributed articles on anarchy, and collected all sorts of computer viruses. I didn't want to write essays in high-school, so I even created a system to trade book reports and assignments with people around the world.

Where was my life headed? I didn't realize it at the time...

I tried to change. I really tried. I'd talk to teachers, I'd write letters, I'd do anything to get my life on track. Writing poetry seemed to help a little bit. The days of listening to gangster rap paid off as I applied the lyrical creativity I heard to my own writings. What did I come up with? My motto by the end of high-school became "The whole system is fucked, everybody knows it's fucked, and nobody will do fuck about it."

Where was my life headed? I felt my world was messed up. But was the "whole world" messed up? I wanted to find out, so I traveled around the world as I continued my pursuit of personal development.

What did I discover? I discovered that the world IS messed up in many ways! AND... the purpose of my life is to improve my world and the world around me -- not to complain about it, but to do something about it.

Where is your life headed? It may seem like it's headed nowhere or everywhere. It may seem really confusing. It may not make much sense right now. Here's the beauty: Wherever we are in life, whatever it is that we are doing, it is happening for a reason. Today we are creating our destiny, whether we realize it or not.

If gangster rap can be transformed into "ordinary words and ordinary sparks of consciousness, enlightenment, transformation, and transcendence..." What can your life be transformed into?

Let's love the world together...

Love,
[)anish /|hmed, blind visionary