Speaker 1: Good morning, get after noon, good evening. Wherever you might be,
Speaker 1: you know you're listening to the Vitamin D Podcast with
Speaker 1: Dawn Day, and I am your host, the eponymous Dawn Day,
Speaker 1: here to help you gain a better understanding of you
Speaker 1: by shining a little light on the parts of your
Speaker 1: life that you can't see just yet. And today is
Speaker 1: a very special day for some of my international listeners.
Speaker 1: Today is Dr Martin Luther King Junior Day in the
Speaker 1: United States, where we celebrate the life and work of
Speaker 1: one of our most prodigious leaders in the fight for
Speaker 1: civil rights. And today I also brought on a mentor
Speaker 1: and close friend of mine, Mr Gerald C. Reverence. Now.
Speaker 1: Gerald is a world's renowned voiceover artist, master drummer, and
Speaker 1: public speaker. You've probably heard his voice before if you
Speaker 1: saw the Disney three D animated film record Route where
Speaker 1: he voiced for m Basson. You probably heard him on
Speaker 1: countless radio and TV commercials, and have probably even seen
Speaker 1: him on one or two or many few as well. Um,
Speaker 1: but he's also the voice of Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you, having heard him do a
Speaker 1: few conditions in the past, let me just say it
Speaker 1: is powerful because you know, he tortually captures the essence
Speaker 1: of King's voice and it really resounds in your soul.
Speaker 1: So I figure, what better day on the day that
Speaker 1: we honor Dr Martin Luther King Junior, than I have
Speaker 1: someone who actually resounds his voice and his message. And
Speaker 1: as Caryl comes on this episode, we talk about them
Speaker 1: what it means to have a dream and where you
Speaker 1: are in relation to the dream that doctor King spoke
Speaker 1: about almost sixty years ago, and and and it makes
Speaker 1: you tap into what your dream is. What's the dream
Speaker 1: you have for you? All right, listen, you don't have
Speaker 1: to figure it out right now, you don't have to
Speaker 1: do Just sit back and relaxed. As we welcome Mr
Speaker 1: Gerald ce with without further ado, it is my pleasure
Speaker 1: to welcome Generald Cee Rivers on the Vitamin D right
Speaker 1: with me. I get excited about, Hey, Mr Gerald c Rivers,
Speaker 1: what's happening? Having one is happening, Life is happening. It's
Speaker 1: all good in the neighborhood, in spite of this world
Speaker 1: of appearances that wants to suggest something different. I know, right,
Speaker 1: but you know, just thinking of one, I've been telling
Speaker 1: people that we have to treat this year like a
Speaker 1: and one type of season like that. You know, we
Speaker 1: usually come up with these cute little uh antidotes and
Speaker 1: rhymes and whatnot for the new year, but like nobody
Speaker 1: had time to be cute about this one. But you're right,
Speaker 1: it's m one And I teld people like, we got
Speaker 1: the vision last year, so now it's the just the
Speaker 1: the m one, the action type of thing. You know,
Speaker 1: you're here, and you know what, with all of this
Speaker 1: stuff that is going on, it really is an opportunity
Speaker 1: for us to take some action, to do some things
Speaker 1: differently because in many ways, clearly the old way wasn't working.
Speaker 1: It wasn't it wasn't, So we're not trying to go
Speaker 1: back to something. We're trying to go forward to something.
Speaker 1: Come on, get holding on. You're right, and you know
Speaker 1: here's the thing too. Um what wasn't working is for sure.
Speaker 1: But one thing I think we had to keep in
Speaker 1: mind is to really embrace the change that's to come. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think more more than just embracing the change,
Speaker 1: we get to define the change because we have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to create something new based on all of the
Speaker 1: madness that has gone on. Come on. I have a
Speaker 1: thing on my wall in my room that says, I
Speaker 1: refuse to relinquish the reality of my fantasy because I
Speaker 1: cannot escape the fantasy that lives in my reality. So
Speaker 1: if things as strange as what has happened in this
Speaker 1: last year can happen, then things that I could believe
Speaker 1: in that other people would have thought were impossible can happen.
Speaker 1: To what's gerald you? You started early, you're starting. You know,
Speaker 1: I didn't even get a chance of war. People like
Speaker 1: to let them know what kind of conversation we're gonna
Speaker 1: have today. But I think we gotta ankling because I
Speaker 1: live in that space. I mean, you know that I'm
Speaker 1: you know, I'm one. I'm grateful. I'm grateful for the
Speaker 1: good and the so called bad, and to every situation
Speaker 1: that we find ourselves in, whether it looks like that
Speaker 1: or not, is an opportunity for growth. Every situation that
Speaker 1: we find ourselves and we have strategically placed ourselves in
Speaker 1: the position for the greatest potential for growth. Now, whether
Speaker 1: or not we take advantage of it is something else.
Speaker 1: But we are always and ever in the position for
Speaker 1: the greatest opportunity for our own growth. First, Oh, no,
Speaker 1: matter what it looks like. You could be in prison,
Speaker 1: you could be in war, you could be married and bliss,
Speaker 1: middle of a divorce, losing your house, buying a house,
Speaker 1: growing up, getting old, getting said, getting well, every opportunity,
Speaker 1: every situation we find ourselves in, we have put ourselves
Speaker 1: there for our greatest potential for growth. So this last
Speaker 1: president put us in the position for our greatest potential
Speaker 1: for growth. And you know, some people, uh, whether they
Speaker 1: be opposed and not in a necessarily for his views
Speaker 1: essentially make America great. Maybe not again, but finally, let's
Speaker 1: make America great. I mean, we've seen we're seeing diversity
Speaker 1: in the White House. We're seeing so many people come forward.
Speaker 1: We're seeing that. You know, with everything that's happened with COVID,
Speaker 1: how this moment of paulse has allowed people to see
Speaker 1: was really going on. You know, it's like a magnifying
Speaker 1: glass because all of these things were going on all
Speaker 1: the time. Anyway, come on, if it shut things down
Speaker 1: in such a way that, for one, now we have
Speaker 1: to look at the health care system because it was
Speaker 1: broken and people are not getting the health care that
Speaker 1: they needed. Now we have to look at the homeless situation,
Speaker 1: because all of a sudden, we're scared that the homeless
Speaker 1: people can be transmitting AIDS. I mean, not AIGs, but
Speaker 1: COVID WHOA, yeah right, I'm so afraid of them that
Speaker 1: remember there was a wireless Oh, we gotta put them
Speaker 1: in a house. Oh, we've got to find some place
Speaker 1: for them to be. What if we had had a
Speaker 1: better health care system to begin with, or had a
Speaker 1: better plan for dealing with those people that were houseless
Speaker 1: in this time before this time showed up. What if
Speaker 1: we had a better plan for caring for the elderly
Speaker 1: and the sick before this showed up. All it did
Speaker 1: was show up and show us how bad the situation
Speaker 1: really was. And I know that there are some folks
Speaker 1: who are saying, oh my god, they increased the unemployment
Speaker 1: and they're giving people these stimulus checks. But when you
Speaker 1: think about it, if people are getting these checks and
Speaker 1: they're getting this unemployment and they still can't pay their bills,
Speaker 1: but it was like that didn't just happen overnights. And
Speaker 1: then when you have a host of people and a
Speaker 1: lot of people who were making what they thought was
Speaker 1: fairly good money, but you lose your job or you
Speaker 1: miss one paycheck and we are all a few paychecks
Speaker 1: away from trying to figure something out frind in the way.
Speaker 1: So it really did shina light on healthcare, on homelessness
Speaker 1: or houselessness, on job inequality, on racism, because if we
Speaker 1: had not had COVID nineteen when George Floyd had that
Speaker 1: incident that took place, most of the world, not just
Speaker 1: this country, but most of the world would just have
Speaker 1: added him to the list. With Eric Garner, and with
Speaker 1: Felio Castillo, and with uh Tamir Rice and the long
Speaker 1: list of library it just would have been added to
Speaker 1: the list. But because people were stuck at home, they
Speaker 1: couldn't go to the bar, they couldn't go to the restaurant,
Speaker 1: they couldn't go to the dance club, they couldn't go
Speaker 1: on vacation, they couldn't go to the gym. They were
Speaker 1: at home, and they were bombarded with this information that
Speaker 1: many of us have been dealing with on a raygular anyway,
Speaker 1: So again here we go again. COVID provided us with
Speaker 1: an opportunity to look at ourselves and to stop with
Speaker 1: all of the the business that we do to keep ourselves.
Speaker 1: We're going to the mall and we're going shopping, buying
Speaker 1: things often that we do not need. We we don't
Speaker 1: need them, but we want to compete and we want
Speaker 1: to show that we can go out and get stuff.
Speaker 1: But staying at home made everybody watch and made everybody
Speaker 1: pay attention in a way that they never have before.
Speaker 1: And I'm gonna say this, and I almost hate to
Speaker 1: say it, but when young white women got on the
Speaker 1: front lines with the Black Lives Matter people, the police
Speaker 1: treated them differently. I know we can talk about the
Speaker 1: most recent incident of insurrection and calling it. We need
Speaker 1: to look at ourselves. We need and we can do
Speaker 1: better than this, and and doing better it requires us
Speaker 1: to do the very same thing that you said, to
Speaker 1: see and really step into the light on the issues
Speaker 1: that matter, because it's so easy to hide behind the distractions,
Speaker 1: like you said, shopping what we don't need, going to
Speaker 1: where you don't go. But when there's nowhere to quote
Speaker 1: unquote hide, you're forced to see. Which it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the segway of what vitamin D is all about. Gerald,
Speaker 1: It's about sharing the light. And I tell people all
Speaker 1: the time, we're gonna talk about the good and the bad,
Speaker 1: because the most important part is that you have to see.
Speaker 1: And Uh, one thing that I really appreciate is that
Speaker 1: you were saying about how all of these things are
Speaker 1: happening right, so much confusion. Some people may call it destruction,
Speaker 1: but I find it a lot of people are kind
Speaker 1: of getting dirty. And I said that dirty with emotions,
Speaker 1: dirty with different trials and tribulations. But like you said,
Speaker 1: with anything, you can grow from anything. Heck, even some
Speaker 1: of the most beautiful exotic flowers, trees, plants in the
Speaker 1: world need dirt to grow. Not just dirt. There's some
Speaker 1: of the most beautiful flowers on the planet that require
Speaker 1: a fire for them to bloom, intense heat at the
Speaker 1: level of fire and burning and destruction for them to
Speaker 1: bloom and blossom and be some of the most beautiful
Speaker 1: things you've ever seen. And that's part of what we're
Speaker 1: looking at now. It's like some of it had to
Speaker 1: burn in order for us to really see the beauty
Speaker 1: of what was there, which is really that we're more
Speaker 1: alike than we are different, and that we really want
Speaker 1: the same things. We ought to be loved, We want
Speaker 1: to be respected, we want to be trusted, we want
Speaker 1: to be valued, We want people to like us. We
Speaker 1: want our families to be cared for. We want our
Speaker 1: needs to be met that supersedes any kind of racial, cultural, economic,
Speaker 1: generational lines. That's what we want. We want to be
Speaker 1: cared for, and we want to do ultimately, we want
Speaker 1: to do good because that's our excuse quite often for
Speaker 1: being angry. Well, things are so messed up that I'm
Speaker 1: really piste off right now that there's no way I
Speaker 1: can think about the good right now because I'm angry
Speaker 1: about all the stuff that's going I have to tell you,
Speaker 1: I've been I have two grown children, and we probably
Speaker 1: talked more this summer than we ever have been the
Speaker 1: whole time that they were in terms of real talk,
Speaker 1: in terms of having a conversation with my kids and
Speaker 1: having them be angry, like they're piste off at the
Speaker 1: world that we live in. And they called to say, Dad,
Speaker 1: we know you've been protesting and you've been on the
Speaker 1: front lines, and you've been talking about the civil rights
Speaker 1: and equal rights and human rights and treating people kind
Speaker 1: for the longest and so we don't know what to do,
Speaker 1: Like what do we do? And it's like, how can
Speaker 1: you not get frustrated? I mean, you're talking about sixty
Speaker 1: and seventy years and it's still the same song. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well you can't get frustrated. It's okay to get frustrated.
Speaker 1: The question is what do you then do with that?
Speaker 1: Because one option is just to get more frustrated and
Speaker 1: more angry and add more fuel to the fire. Another option,
Speaker 1: and this from this is this is important. And because
Speaker 1: white folks were calling me saying, Gerald, we know you're
Speaker 1: the voice of Martin Luther King and we want to
Speaker 1: be an ally. What do we do? And my kids
Speaker 1: were saying, you know, we want to get out there
Speaker 1: and be angry and and maybe be destructive, but we
Speaker 1: want our voices to be heard. What do we do?
Speaker 1: And you know what I've been telling people. The first
Speaker 1: thing you gotta do is self care. So many of
Speaker 1: us are hurting from wounds and scars that have been
Speaker 1: with us since we were small children, and we have
Speaker 1: never healed them. So when something like this comes up,
Speaker 1: it doesn't just have us angry about what's going on
Speaker 1: right now. It activates the trauma that we many of
Speaker 1: or most of us have experienced as children. And now
Speaker 1: we have a place to direct that anger and that rage.
Speaker 1: But it's really not about For some of the folks
Speaker 1: out there. It wasn't about George Floyd. It was about
Speaker 1: I'm mad about something else. Now everybody's mad. Now I
Speaker 1: can be mad too. But when you do the real
Speaker 1: self care, when you take care of yourself, when you
Speaker 1: love yourself yourself, when you heal yourself, you have what
Speaker 1: I can only describe as discernment, so that when you
Speaker 1: go out there, you know this is my pain and
Speaker 1: that ain't mine, that's somebody else's pain. That now we're
Speaker 1: in this collective mob mentality that we can all be
Speaker 1: angry about. But when you have that clarity and that discernment,
Speaker 1: you go. When I'm healed, I don't join any mob
Speaker 1: that's going on out there that's angry and piste off
Speaker 1: I I go. I see that they're angry and understand
Speaker 1: why they're angry, and I wish we could all be
Speaker 1: at peace. Okay, Well let me jump in Jairo. Now
Speaker 1: I do love. I love the idealists jump in a circle.
Speaker 1: Um let's saying kumbai ya. And I'm saying that to
Speaker 1: be facetious. But one thing that I I will concur
Speaker 1: when you were talking about having the anger and the rage,
Speaker 1: is that it's all stemming from some type of fear,
Speaker 1: a fear of some type of false evidence, of some
Speaker 1: type of lack. But Gerald, you know, I have not
Speaker 1: been on this earth fifty sixty plus years to understand
Speaker 1: the disparities that's happened, um, you know, to my mother's
Speaker 1: generation and grandparents generation. But what I can say and
Speaker 1: my thirty plus years of life is that it's a
Speaker 1: little But do we want to say anger aggression? Okay?
Speaker 1: Because it's about emoting. And I think one thing you
Speaker 1: you you kept expounding upon self care and as I'll
Speaker 1: talk about a lot of things I talk about even
Speaker 1: with Vitamin D principles, and it's something that I every
Speaker 1: time I'll leave my listeners saying that you are your
Speaker 1: greatest asset. And you have to think about your life,
Speaker 1: bank account, what kind of deposits, what kind of liabilities
Speaker 1: are you making in your life? Because everything in touch
Speaker 1: of you is an extension. Right. So when you say, oh,
Speaker 1: let's not get angry, how can you not be? I'm
Speaker 1: not saying let's not get angry. I'm saying, when we
Speaker 1: do get angry, let's find out what we're really angry about.
Speaker 1: It's easy to join the mass and the mob when
Speaker 1: everybody is piste off, but they're piste off about one
Speaker 1: thing and I'm piste off about something else. When I
Speaker 1: do that self care, I know that's their stuff, this
Speaker 1: is my stuff, and I don't have to join in
Speaker 1: and jump on the bandwagon and pile on when everybody's
Speaker 1: piste off because it seems like we should be piste off.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying you can't be piste off. You shouldn't
Speaker 1: be piste off. We do get piste off. What I'm
Speaker 1: saying is what do we do with it? What do
Speaker 1: you do about it? I don't want to embarrass her,
Speaker 1: but I was having a conversation with my daughter and
Speaker 1: she was in New York, and then she went back
Speaker 1: to Georgia to be with her mom because her mom
Speaker 1: was going through something, and she said, we're getting a
Speaker 1: gun and we're going to the driving range, I mean
Speaker 1: to the shooting range, because we don't know what's going
Speaker 1: to happen out here. And it just it just ripped
Speaker 1: me apart. And I understand that feeling and that reaction,
Speaker 1: but I grew up in Compton where everybody had a gun,
Speaker 1: and it didn't solve the problem. You know, people wound
Speaker 1: up using those guns on other people who looked like them,
Speaker 1: who looked like us. I mean, and I don't want
Speaker 1: to go too deep into this, but I was in
Speaker 1: Compton when the Crips were born, when it was a
Speaker 1: faction of the Black Panther Party, and the acronym for
Speaker 1: Crip was actually a community revolution in progress. And then
Speaker 1: when you had the FBI and CIA and co Intel
Speaker 1: pro come in and take the leaders of this movement
Speaker 1: who were trying to teach black men how to govern
Speaker 1: themselves and how to police their own communities so that
Speaker 1: the police didn't have to come in there. Once you
Speaker 1: took all of those people out, and it was a
Speaker 1: strategic plan by the federal government to remove black men
Speaker 1: from positions of leadership within the black community and turn
Speaker 1: what should have been a powerful political organization into a
Speaker 1: street gang. Once you took all that away, now you've
Speaker 1: got all these brothers who had once learned how to
Speaker 1: fight and learned how to defend women in the honor
Speaker 1: of women. And if you had a brother in one
Speaker 1: home who was abusive to his wife, you had other
Speaker 1: black men in that community who would come in and say, brother,
Speaker 1: you can't do that, Rather than her calling the police
Speaker 1: and have another man, another black man, locked up. The
Speaker 1: brothers showed up and said, man, you can't do that.
Speaker 1: You do, there will be consequences. You can't violate the spirit,
Speaker 1: because that's just gonna bring the man into this neighborhood
Speaker 1: and he's gonna incarceerate more and more of us. But
Speaker 1: once you take out the men who are teaching these
Speaker 1: boys how to be men, you just started the whole
Speaker 1: racist cycle all over again. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you have these young men who now have learned how
Speaker 1: to use weapons, have have felt a little power and
Speaker 1: a little authority, and and some of that rage, but
Speaker 1: now there's nobody to direct it towards. Now they think
Speaker 1: it's all about us, and we can control things, and
Speaker 1: we have power and we have right. But without a
Speaker 1: sound mind and that discernment that you speak of, you
Speaker 1: can go astray. You wind up doing things that go
Speaker 1: against the very thing that you ultimately want. And I
Speaker 1: had a daughter. When black men kill another black man
Speaker 1: in the neighborhood, both sides are affected. The same as
Speaker 1: true when Americans go to war in Iran and Afghanistan
Speaker 1: and Iraq and they come back and they are never
Speaker 1: the same. We are not as humans. It is not
Speaker 1: really our way to go and kill and destroy one another.
Speaker 1: We be conditioned, we have to be almost brainwashed to
Speaker 1: the point where we can be humanize another human being
Speaker 1: in order to take their life. That's what men learn
Speaker 1: how to do in prison. You go to prison and
Speaker 1: you say, I gotta be devoid of emotion because I
Speaker 1: don't want to show weakness. You go into war, you go,
Speaker 1: I've got to be devoid of emotion because I don't
Speaker 1: want to be vulnerable. And so the idea of just
Speaker 1: responding with aggression has ultimately never served the overall good.
Speaker 1: What it has served to do is conquer, kill and destroy. Yep,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take over your land. And what crips and
Speaker 1: Bloods were doing, they were mirroring what the federal government
Speaker 1: was doing. It's like you're gonna go into somebody else's land,
Speaker 1: somebody else's territory, and take over and decide that you
Speaker 1: you like, you're a new colonialist. You're gonna go over
Speaker 1: there and put your flag down and say his mine,
Speaker 1: I claim this, and forget that there were people already there. Well,
Speaker 1: here's the thing that's so interesting, Um, you're talking about
Speaker 1: how the federal government came in and took all the
Speaker 1: men leaders. It's something interesting and I um I talked
Speaker 1: about this on the very first episode of Vitamin D
Speaker 1: and it was entitled remembering who you Are, because I
Speaker 1: think oftentimes when you have a disconnection of who you are,
Speaker 1: that's when you lose that level of discernment. That's where
Speaker 1: you lose your path or what you're going. That's when
Speaker 1: you lose your means of standing because you realize you're
Speaker 1: falling for anything. And when you're talking about these young
Speaker 1: men in the community, it only makes sense when you've
Speaker 1: ripped everything that probably was something to look up to.
Speaker 1: So now it's kind of like I'm scavenging finding something
Speaker 1: else to give me power that I can outlash in
Speaker 1: that range. But this whole notion that you're saying of
Speaker 1: dealing with these traumas, you know, putting the pieces together,
Speaker 1: it's like collectively coming through of what your vision for
Speaker 1: your life is. What is the vision for your life?
Speaker 1: What do you want? And I asked people all the time,
Speaker 1: what do you want? The challenges A lot of people
Speaker 1: are afraid to ask for they want for ask for
Speaker 1: what they want because they're afraid they're not going to
Speaker 1: get it, or is it because they're afraid that they
Speaker 1: will both. But as children, there were times when they
Speaker 1: ask for things and somebody just said, no, you ain't
Speaker 1: getting that, we can't afford that, you can't have that,
Speaker 1: you don't deserve that, And it created an eight track
Speaker 1: tape that was playing over and over in their mind
Speaker 1: saying you can't have that, we can't afford that, you
Speaker 1: don't deserve that, and you're not gonna get that, you know,
Speaker 1: like the joke used to say, when now when you
Speaker 1: go in the stove, you don't want ship, you ain't
Speaker 1: getting ship. Don't ask for you just don't don't touch nothing,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean? And that kind of
Speaker 1: conditioning is atrophy to the soul and the mind to
Speaker 1: just say no, no, no, no, no no no, no,
Speaker 1: no no no. So what we did in response the
Speaker 1: generation of parents that I'm in my fifties, we decided
Speaker 1: we weren't going to do that to our kids. We decided,
Speaker 1: if my kids want something, I'm just gonna give it
Speaker 1: to them, you know, because they're a kid, and if
Speaker 1: they're going to school or if they're doing whatever, they
Speaker 1: should be able to have whatever they want, because when
Speaker 1: I was a kid and I asked for what I
Speaker 1: want and I didn't get it. So then we are
Speaker 1: concerned that we created this age of entitlement where young
Speaker 1: people are growing up now saying I shouldn't have to
Speaker 1: work for anything, you should just give it to me.
Speaker 1: And then it's like we created those so called monsters.
Speaker 1: But the truth is there was something good in that
Speaker 1: we led them to believe that they would have something
Speaker 1: and that they didn't have to do. Our parents say
Speaker 1: you gotta work, and tall and you gotta And the
Speaker 1: truth is, as a successful actor and voiceover actor, I
Speaker 1: don't work hard. I work smirked. I do what I enjoy.
Speaker 1: I do what I love, and I give back to
Speaker 1: the community, and the community and the universe reward me.
Speaker 1: It's not that I have to go in and work
Speaker 1: sixty hours a week or eighty hours a week or
Speaker 1: fourteen different jobs and be separated from my family. So
Speaker 1: this idea that it is our God given right come
Speaker 1: on to have and to be and to grow and
Speaker 1: to evolve as human beings, whatever that means and whatever
Speaker 1: that looks like to us, is where we need to
Speaker 1: be going. But but as you said, it starts with
Speaker 1: who am I and what do I want? And not
Speaker 1: being afraid to ask for what you want. Some people
Speaker 1: wanted to go to college, they couldn't do it. Some
Speaker 1: people wanted to play basketball, they couldn't do it. Some
Speaker 1: people wanted to be professional athletes or profess rappers or
Speaker 1: professional whatever, and in many instances they were shut down.
Speaker 1: And so this other generation said, they want to be
Speaker 1: a rapper because they don't want to work, But they
Speaker 1: might want to be a rapper because they have that
Speaker 1: skill and that gift. Now here's the other thing. Here's
Speaker 1: the caveat. Not everybody can be Lebron James or Kobe Bryant.
Speaker 1: Not everybody can be l L COO J and Beyonce
Speaker 1: and jay Z. They got that are we have created
Speaker 1: this capitalistic society that says, my neighbor was selling away
Speaker 1: and she made a bunch of money, so I'm gonna
Speaker 1: do that. Well, maybe she made a bunch of money
Speaker 1: because she was passionate about it. Just got her do that.
Speaker 1: You think I'm gonna do that too, And then when
Speaker 1: that doesn't work, you're reinforcing this idea of failure and
Speaker 1: I can't have it And it's not available to me.
Speaker 1: But at some point you've got to be able to say,
Speaker 1: what is it that I want and what is it
Speaker 1: that I want to do, regardless of what anybody thinks.
Speaker 1: I tell people all the time, stop thinking about what
Speaker 1: other people are thinking that you are thinking about, because
Speaker 1: most of the time they are wrong, and you are
Speaker 1: wrong about what you think they think you think. It's
Speaker 1: a space of space in your mind. So if you
Speaker 1: were focused on what am I thinking about? What do
Speaker 1: I want? And if I want to know? And I
Speaker 1: ain't gonna get to preach you on you, but if
Speaker 1: I want to know somebody's opinion of me, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: go to the Most High because his opinion or her
Speaker 1: opinion of me is all good. It's all gravy accepting
Speaker 1: of who I am and where I am right now
Speaker 1: in this position for my greatest potential for growth. So
Speaker 1: stop thinking about what other people are thinking that you
Speaker 1: are thinking about, and start thinking about I heard this
Speaker 1: from Reverend Michael, start thinking about what God thinks of you.
Speaker 1: And there's no gap, there's no space, there's no blank
Speaker 1: anything emptiness in there. It's just you are a child
Speaker 1: of the Most High. And then we start to It
Speaker 1: works both ways, but then we start to perform with
Speaker 1: some people would call esteemable acts. When we think we
Speaker 1: are connected to God and good, then we start doing
Speaker 1: things that are godly and good. Come on, you gotta
Speaker 1: act as if you already are. And see even when
Speaker 1: you talk about you gotta do the tap in and
Speaker 1: when we go through that, we find that through the meditation. Meditation,
Speaker 1: we find that out through the intuition. One thing that
Speaker 1: you also said is that, um, what God isn't gonna
Speaker 1: do is tell you anything that you're not every time
Speaker 1: we have a yes and type of God, and I
Speaker 1: tell people all the time. And you know, studying improv
Speaker 1: at the ground, that's has really taught me to live
Speaker 1: at yes and kind of life because we have to
Speaker 1: walk in the expectancy of abundance. And like you said,
Speaker 1: when you walk around with those energies, that attracts. So
Speaker 1: if you're walking in a life where you're expecting more,
Speaker 1: if you're walking in a life when you're expecting good things,
Speaker 1: if you're walking in a life knowing that you can
Speaker 1: create whatever life that you want, you find that you
Speaker 1: do because if you were created by a creator, you
Speaker 1: are meant to create absolutely, So if we're created in
Speaker 1: the image of God, we don't all look alike. So
Speaker 1: that's not the image that we were created in. We
Speaker 1: were created in the image of creation. Come on, move
Speaker 1: things forward, to to escalate, to elevate, to raise our
Speaker 1: own consciousness and that of those around us. Because rising
Speaker 1: tide lives all boats. Whoa what you say, why did it?
Speaker 1: Exam wasn't ready for that? One tide lifts all of
Speaker 1: the boats in the harbor, everybody there. So if my
Speaker 1: consciousness is raised, then everybody around me, whether they like
Speaker 1: it or know it, or even are aware of it
Speaker 1: or not, their consciousness is being raised as well, because
Speaker 1: sometimes they can't hold that space for themselves. So for
Speaker 1: those of us who can, we're gonna hold that space
Speaker 1: for you, and it's gonna be ready for you when
Speaker 1: you're ready to receive it. Talk about when you're ready
Speaker 1: to receive. And I find that oftentimes we are so
Speaker 1: quick to ask for what the next man have, not
Speaker 1: realizing that it was designed for them, but also forgetting
Speaker 1: whether or not we've expanded ourselves to have the capacity
Speaker 1: to hold it right right, Sometimes we're asking for things
Speaker 1: that we aren't even ready for. What you say, and
Speaker 1: then have the audacity to get upset because we can't
Speaker 1: contain it right. But you know, the man say, if
Speaker 1: you if you stay ready, you ain't gonna get ready.
Speaker 1: If you're ready, ready, ready, then when the opportunity present itself,
Speaker 1: you're ready. So what what we need to be doing,
Speaker 1: all of us, black, white, old, young otherwise, is preparing
Speaker 1: ourselves for who and what we really are. And it
Speaker 1: becomes so easy because and it's I'm gonna I say,
Speaker 1: I to say, I say, it becomes easy, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that there aren't challenges. And one one man's
Speaker 1: prayer said, Lord, don't make it easier, just make me stronger,
Speaker 1: which because when you start working out, you can't lift
Speaker 1: a hundred pounds on the first day, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. But if you put in work, you lift
Speaker 1: in a hundred pounds, you lift in two hundred pounds,
Speaker 1: you're lifting your own body weight, and that does something
Speaker 1: to you psychologically to say, I remember when I couldn't
Speaker 1: get this thing up, and now I'm doing that and
Speaker 1: two times ten times what I thought I was even
Speaker 1: capable of. But that's because you was out there putting
Speaker 1: in work, putting slaving like we need to be clear
Speaker 1: about that because the generation before us felt like the
Speaker 1: only way you're gonna get ahead is you're gonna be
Speaker 1: in the fields, or you're gonna work for for the
Speaker 1: post office until you you know, until you did. And
Speaker 1: I watched these people work for the post office and
Speaker 1: work for the government and working these jobs that they
Speaker 1: thought were stable, and then when it came time for
Speaker 1: them to retire, they didn't have enough money to live on.
Speaker 1: So I figure, if it's gonna be tough anyway, I
Speaker 1: might as well be doing something I enjoy along the way.
Speaker 1: And I have learned that if you do what you love,
Speaker 1: someone will love what you do. What's you saying, many
Speaker 1: of us are doing things that somebody else is doing.
Speaker 1: He did that, so you got you got plumbers who
Speaker 1: should have been doctors. You've got construction workers who should
Speaker 1: have been lawyers. But they were like, he's making money
Speaker 1: and construction, So that's an easy I'm gonna go do
Speaker 1: that right now, because and then they're miserable or they
Speaker 1: go to work in an office someplace. And I'm not
Speaker 1: diminishing the work in an office or in a retail store.
Speaker 1: For some people, they're deriving joy from that from for
Speaker 1: some people they actually love interacting with people are working
Speaker 1: in a restaurant and doing that. But there's a host
Speaker 1: of other folks who are on those jobs and they
Speaker 1: are miserable, and you can see it when you walk
Speaker 1: in the door. And the reason that they are miserable
Speaker 1: is because they are disconnected from who and what they
Speaker 1: really are. They were meant to do something else. They
Speaker 1: were meant to do something greater than that for them,
Speaker 1: and because they're not doing that, that's why they're angry.
Speaker 1: That's why they're hurting, that's why they're upset, that's why
Speaker 1: they're ready to take somebody else's stuff. Because King teaches
Speaker 1: me that ignorance, poverty, and disease will breed crime, no
Speaker 1: matter what the racial group may be. So when you
Speaker 1: have people who are ignorant of themselves and who they
Speaker 1: are and are impoverished, not only financially but spiritually, then
Speaker 1: you can only to a certain degree, expect a certain
Speaker 1: level of elevation and consciousness within that community. But all
Speaker 1: of those people can come up a lot of mercy
Speaker 1: which can come up. Everybody can come everybody can come
Speaker 1: up a little bit from where you are to where
Speaker 1: you want to be to where you you are at
Speaker 1: your next level of existence. And when you begin to
Speaker 1: practice this kind of elevation, you all of a suddenly
Speaker 1: have what we describe in metaphysics as a quantum leap.
Speaker 1: So you've been taking these baby stats. Okay, I was
Speaker 1: doing it this much, and now I can do this much.
Speaker 1: And now I got this opportunity, and now I got
Speaker 1: this opportunity, and then something else happens. It was like
Speaker 1: I did not expect that I was. I didn't expect it,
Speaker 1: but I was ready for it. I was preparing myself
Speaker 1: for it so that I was grateful when it showed up,
Speaker 1: and I just had to stop for a minute and
Speaker 1: say thank you, thank you. Gratitude is everything. We watch
Speaker 1: people when when something quote unquote miraculous happens. But the
Speaker 1: truth is, the miraculous can be the mundane. We can
Speaker 1: turn what we thought was miraculous into our everyday existence.
Speaker 1: The fact that don't don't get me started. The fact
Speaker 1: body functions in the way that it does, and the
Speaker 1: heart and the lungs and the pumping of blood and
Speaker 1: the skin and the hair and everything, we don't we
Speaker 1: don't have to think about any of that We don't
Speaker 1: have to work on making our heart pump blood. We
Speaker 1: don't have to work on making our lungs facilitate oxygen.
Speaker 1: We don't have to think about that. That part is
Speaker 1: taken care. But if that is our design, and we
Speaker 1: have these designer genes that are designed to grow and
Speaker 1: evolve and expand, then we can do the same thing consciously, spiritually,
Speaker 1: and emotionally. So many of these folks, and you know,
Speaker 1: I know them and I love them, but they are atrophied.
Speaker 1: They had development to a certain level in their lives
Speaker 1: and something happened, and emotionally they're stuck right there. Consciously,
Speaker 1: they're still in the place psychologically where they were at
Speaker 1: sixteen or thirteen or four or twenty to when trauma struck,
Speaker 1: and they weren't able to continue to to evolve in
Speaker 1: the way that they needed to. But even staying there
Speaker 1: was telling them internally, you need to deal with something
Speaker 1: that is here. You need to grow from something that
Speaker 1: has taken place so that you can move on. This
Speaker 1: happened to you because you I hate to say it,
Speaker 1: but I'm gonna say it because you could handle it.
Speaker 1: Signed for everybody, your life was designed for you and
Speaker 1: and dare I say, by you, you put yourself in
Speaker 1: the perfect situation to evolve to your ultimate state of consciousness.
Speaker 1: Some of us had to go down to places that
Speaker 1: were low to remind ourselves that we could come up
Speaker 1: from anywhere. Some of us had to give ourselves a
Speaker 1: head start because we knew you were low, So we
Speaker 1: had to start a little further down because we knew
Speaker 1: that's who we were and that's what we needed. So
Speaker 1: these designer genes were also designed by us for us
Speaker 1: to wait a minute, wait, I can't feel my legs.
Speaker 1: I felt that it was designed by us. And it's
Speaker 1: it truly comes to a point where you have to
Speaker 1: walk in authority over your life, you know, And it
Speaker 1: has to a lot of people now are participating in
Speaker 1: the lip service in the talk. Everybody got the language.
Speaker 1: They got the language of therapy, they got the language
Speaker 1: of self help, they got the language of Dr Field,
Speaker 1: they got the language of Oprah, they got the language
Speaker 1: of Mary Ann Williamson. But the faith without the works
Speaker 1: is dead. You've got to do something about it. You
Speaker 1: can't just talk about it. You gotta be about it.
Speaker 1: And and I think it's important to understand that it's
Speaker 1: not going to be easy, because if you're going after something,
Speaker 1: chances are you are flexing my souls that you have
Speaker 1: and used. Hence, that's why you're being elevated. That's why
Speaker 1: you're being given an opportunity to do more right now,
Speaker 1: right now, right now, right now, right now, Over and
Speaker 1: over and over and over again, you're giving an opportunity
Speaker 1: to do and to be more. Right now. You can
Speaker 1: change your mind, like you can change your clothes and
Speaker 1: decide to do something differently and to do something better.
Speaker 1: And if you can't figure that out, here's my my counsel,
Speaker 1: then help somebody else, because in the act of helping,
Speaker 1: in the act of giving, you're also receiving. It's two
Speaker 1: sides of the same coin. And I'm gonna say this
Speaker 1: to folks, got to learn how to forgive and buy.
Speaker 1: Forgive I mean to give forward. I mean to give
Speaker 1: people something that you don't thing they have earned or deserved.
Speaker 1: That's what forgiveness really is. Because when you're waiting on
Speaker 1: them to apologize and to earn it and to show
Speaker 1: you that they are remorseful about it before you can
Speaker 1: forgive them, that's not forgiveness. That's a negotiation. That's a
Speaker 1: business transaction. That's not forgiveness. Forgiveness it's not for them,
Speaker 1: it's for you or forgiving them. So you are giving
Speaker 1: yourself permission to go forward because otherwise, withholding love and
Speaker 1: withholding what is really for them is only keeping you
Speaker 1: back in the space whether and I tell folks all
Speaker 1: the time, not forgiving someone is like drinking poison and
Speaker 1: expecting the other person to die. And it's like the
Speaker 1: thing of when you're talking about giving anyhow and how
Speaker 1: you can't help to receive because when you give, your
Speaker 1: hands have to be open. Well, that's cycling in for
Speaker 1: something else to come into it. But it goes back
Speaker 1: to what we're initially saying that that whole mindset, if
Speaker 1: you're come from fear, you're coming from lack. You feel
Speaker 1: as though you're trying to constantly fill up something. But
Speaker 1: like when you said, when you come from a yes
Speaker 1: and type of lifestyle and knowing that God is creating
Speaker 1: to be more, to do things exceedingly and abundantly, you
Speaker 1: realize you're just on overflow with your thought, with your possibilities,
Speaker 1: with your dreams ever more and nevertheless, never more, neverthless.
Speaker 1: It King teaches me that human progress never rolls in
Speaker 1: on the wheels of inevitability. It comes with the consistent
Speaker 1: work and the tireless effort of dedicated individuals. And without
Speaker 1: this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the
Speaker 1: primitive forces of social stagnation. So he ultimately says, the
Speaker 1: time to do right is now, and that time is
Speaker 1: always right to do right, oh always. And the first
Speaker 1: person that most of us have to forgive is ourselves,
Speaker 1: because we're withholding love from ourselves. We've decided that we
Speaker 1: made a mistake and we did something, and therefore we
Speaker 1: don't deserve the blessings and the opportunities that are coming
Speaker 1: to us. Now we won't say that and admit that
Speaker 1: out loud, but we know that there was something that
Speaker 1: we did, and as a result we think, well, I
Speaker 1: could never come up because I got this thing that
Speaker 1: I did. And so the first thing you have to
Speaker 1: do is forgive yourself. And that's not to pretend like
Speaker 1: you didn't do it, because you did. But you are
Speaker 1: entitled to forgiveness. You are entitled to give forward to yourself.
Speaker 1: It's like throwing a pass to yourself that you later
Speaker 1: on in life can step up and receive the path
Speaker 1: that you threw the things that you said in motion,
Speaker 1: the things that the seeds that you planted. Because many
Speaker 1: of us, and I've said this before, we will plant
Speaker 1: these sea leads and then we'll walk away from them,
Speaker 1: thinking nothing came of that. And then we have these
Speaker 1: brilliant ideas and we start on them and we walk away,
Speaker 1: and then somebody else comes along and go, that's a
Speaker 1: great idea, and then later we're going, that was my idea.
Speaker 1: I thought about that, but you left you you were impatient.
Speaker 1: The folks say ten thousand hours, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan's,
Speaker 1: Michael Jackson, Tiger Woods, uh Born Buffett, they put in
Speaker 1: ten thousand hours doing something that they really wanted to
Speaker 1: do and it paid off. And we think ten thousand hours, Man,
Speaker 1: that's a long time. I was trying to calculate how
Speaker 1: long that is in general, so this time, but you
Speaker 1: know what, the kids are spending ten thousand hours on
Speaker 1: the Facebook, thousand hours on the cell phone. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you think about it, we checked that cell phone
Speaker 1: several times an hour, sometimes several times a minute. The
Speaker 1: phone didn't ring, it didn't ring. There's nothing going on
Speaker 1: to see the light, Oh, okay, okay, I'm breathing. Okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: and then we put it down. If we just did
Speaker 1: that with ourselves, Oh my gosh, let me check in
Speaker 1: with me. How am I doing, What am I feeling?
Speaker 1: What am I thinking? What am I doing? Towards even
Speaker 1: a second at a time, five seconds at a time.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna pick up the phone right now. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna spend some time thinking about me. I'm gonna think
Speaker 1: about what it is that I want and what it
Speaker 1: is that's gonna move me from where I am to
Speaker 1: where I want to be if I just take one
Speaker 1: step at a time, and so much of it, and
Speaker 1: it sounds tripe, but it's not. But so much of
Speaker 1: it begins with a state of mind. It all begins
Speaker 1: with a fellow's will, with a state of mind, and
Speaker 1: that we can change well, I mean, the fact that
Speaker 1: we can think about what we think about and to
Speaker 1: decide what we're going to think about tells us that
Speaker 1: the mind is not in control. The mind is here
Speaker 1: to function and serve some higher power. So consciousness infuses
Speaker 1: the mind, not the other way around. The mind thinks
Speaker 1: about consciousness. The consciousness is It just is, and it
Speaker 1: always is, and it always was and it always will be.
Speaker 1: It reminds us that we're connected to everything. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: what were we supposed to be talking about. Here's the
Speaker 1: thing that's so interesting. You know. I got you on
Speaker 1: here because I want to talk about the importance of
Speaker 1: having a dream. But everything that you said, whether it
Speaker 1: becomes a fact of norm what you deserve, how important
Speaker 1: it is to make sure that you tap into the dream,
Speaker 1: How understanding how you have to be connected, how you
Speaker 1: have to realize that you have the possibility and the
Speaker 1: power to enable yourself to create the life that you want,
Speaker 1: which can come tangible as your dream. And I think
Speaker 1: sometimes that people forget that. They just want to go
Speaker 1: after the idea of what a dream is, but it
Speaker 1: really comes down to understanding what it means to really
Speaker 1: have one. And I'm just listening to you and how
Speaker 1: you're talking and just the ways of how you've allowed
Speaker 1: your mindset to fuel you as to where you're going,
Speaker 1: but more importantly, to understand who you are. So then
Speaker 1: when I challenge or I asked you to think, you know,
Speaker 1: we talked about you know, starting off with like everything
Speaker 1: that's happened in the world today, that kind of stems
Speaker 1: like the makeup of who we are and what one is.
Speaker 1: You know, this episode is coming out on Martin Luther
Speaker 1: King Day, and here this man has been talking about
Speaker 1: a dream. Has much changed since he delivered the speech.
Speaker 1: The answer to that is both yes and to know,
Speaker 1: there are some things that have changed. We have evolved
Speaker 1: as a species and as a people, and as a
Speaker 1: country and as a nation. Martin Luther King, for example,
Speaker 1: said we will have a black president. He said that
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties when people said, Negro you crazy,
Speaker 1: There's no way that these white folks will ever elect
Speaker 1: a black man to be the president of the United States.
Speaker 1: But here we go. He wasn't listening to what they
Speaker 1: were talking about. He just tapped into something someplace else
Speaker 1: and he was like, I think it should only take
Speaker 1: about twenty five years. It took fifty. It took fifty years.
Speaker 1: But he held space for it until it happened. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting because yes, there are some things that have changed.
Speaker 1: And black people are making more money right now, some
Speaker 1: black people than ever before. We have more rich people
Speaker 1: right now than we have ever had, not just black people,
Speaker 1: but on the planet. We have more millionaires than have
Speaker 1: ever existed on the planet at any time in human history.
Speaker 1: We have more of them now. Now there might be
Speaker 1: fewer blacks that have as much money as they once
Speaker 1: did when it was close, But in terms of the
Speaker 1: sheer numbers of people who are making a million dollars
Speaker 1: or more or have a million dollars or more, there's
Speaker 1: a whole lot of now here is here in life
Speaker 1: the rub and here and going back to King, and
Speaker 1: I'm not condemning these athletes for making long paper because
Speaker 1: somebody was making money off of them and then they
Speaker 1: signed a million dollar contract to play basketball or to
Speaker 1: play football. But when we have some people making a
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars for a few years and we have
Speaker 1: millions of people sleeping on the street, King would say
Speaker 1: something is out of kilter. There is something wrong with that. No,
Speaker 1: it's not to say that those brothers shouldn't be making
Speaker 1: money or that other people shouldn't be making money. But
Speaker 1: if we have that kind of money to pay one
Speaker 1: person send a hundred million dollars, then we should not
Speaker 1: have people sleeping on the street anywhere in this country.
Speaker 1: King would say, we're all interconnected, and as long as
Speaker 1: there is are poor people in the world. Nobody can
Speaker 1: be rich even if he has a million dollars, because
Speaker 1: we're all connected. As long as diseases are rampant, and
Speaker 1: we now know that they are, no man can be
Speaker 1: totally healthy, even if you just got to check up
Speaker 1: in the finest clinics of the nation. Strangely enough, I
Speaker 1: can never be what I ought to be until you
Speaker 1: are what you ought to be. And you can never
Speaker 1: be what you are to be until I am what
Speaker 1: I ought to be. This is the way the world
Speaker 1: is made. It's called the interrelated structure of reality, and
Speaker 1: it just is the way that it is now. There's
Speaker 1: some other things that King talked about, even in the
Speaker 1: I have a dream speech that people like to forget
Speaker 1: or like bury someplace. But he said a couple of things.
Speaker 1: He said, the people ask they ask in of the
Speaker 1: devotees of civil rights. The people are devoted to changing
Speaker 1: the system that we live in. Well, damn man, when
Speaker 1: will you be satisfied? He's like, when when is it
Speaker 1: ever enough? And he says, and I quote, we can
Speaker 1: never be satisfied as long as the negro is the
Speaker 1: victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality, has that changed?
Speaker 1: He says, we can never be satisfied as long as
Speaker 1: the negro's basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to
Speaker 1: a larger one. Has that changed? And then he says,
Speaker 1: we can never be satisfied as long as there's a
Speaker 1: negro in Mississippi who cannot vote, or a negro in
Speaker 1: New York who believes he has nothing for which to vote. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: he says, we can never be satisfied until justice. Justice
Speaker 1: rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Speaker 1: Those are the words that people forget in that speech.
Speaker 1: They hear him talking about it. I have a dream
Speaker 1: and all the hands together, and you know, all some
Speaker 1: of that has happened. But that other stuff he said.
Speaker 1: They said, when will you be satisfied? He said, we
Speaker 1: will never be satisfied until these things take place. And
Speaker 1: those things, in many instances, have not taken place. They
Speaker 1: have not. So, yes, we recognize the progress that we
Speaker 1: have made, and we acknowledge the work that there is
Speaker 1: still left to do. And in many ways, thank you
Speaker 1: that we have something to do. Thank you that we
Speaker 1: have something noble to do. Because what he talks about
Speaker 1: the thing is about this, I have a dream speech
Speaker 1: that most people don't know. When he delivered that speech
Speaker 1: in Washington, d c. At the Lincoln Memorial on August
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty three at about four thirty four twenty
Speaker 1: in the afternoon, people think that's the first time that
Speaker 1: he ever talked about having a dream. It's not. So
Speaker 1: he went to Chicago, he went to Detroit and he
Speaker 1: talked about this dream, and he went someplace else and
Speaker 1: talked about what he called the American Dream. You listen
Speaker 1: to the speech, he says, I have a dream that
Speaker 1: is deeply rooted in the American dream. And what he
Speaker 1: says to America is just be true to what you
Speaker 1: said on paper. He's like, you wrote it down. It's
Speaker 1: like some of the greatest words, the Constitution and the
Speaker 1: Declaration of Independence are some of the greatest words and
Speaker 1: flowery language ever written in the history of the world.
Speaker 1: He's like, just be true to what you said on paper.
Speaker 1: Because what you said on papers that all men were
Speaker 1: created equal and that they were endowed by their creator
Speaker 1: with certain inalienable rights. And here we go. We love
Speaker 1: to alienate people and make aliens and make them illegal aliens,
Speaker 1: and make them like they come from another planet. He
Speaker 1: says they are in alienable rights, which means you can't
Speaker 1: make them alien or deprive them from anybody. That's what
Speaker 1: they wrote, That's what the Founding fathers wrote, and that
Speaker 1: all men are creating equal and that they are endowed
Speaker 1: by their creator with certain and alienable rights. And among
Speaker 1: these here we go our life. I'm gonna say that
Speaker 1: one again. Among them are life, liberty, which represents our freedom,
Speaker 1: and three and I think maybe the most important one
Speaker 1: the pursuit of happiness. So, like, what would you say
Speaker 1: to those people out there that are doing the work,
Speaker 1: you know, to for this pursue life of with life,
Speaker 1: with liberty and happiness and freedom and all that, Like
Speaker 1: you know, all of the politicians, the activists, you know,
Speaker 1: even like everyday people like you and me. You know,
Speaker 1: what would you say to them? And what do you
Speaker 1: think King would say to them? For the ones that
Speaker 1: are living it, we would say thank you, and we
Speaker 1: would say the work is not complete until everybody's taking
Speaker 1: care of But you know, everybody don't want to do
Speaker 1: the work. And so you know, I was on the fence,
Speaker 1: you know, you were saying, like, as long as there's
Speaker 1: homeless people out there, you know, um, then kind of
Speaker 1: guess sort of things wouldn't be right if someone else
Speaker 1: is making a hundred plus million dollars. But the fact
Speaker 1: of the matter is everybody is not going to be
Speaker 1: willing to do the work. And I don't know myself
Speaker 1: if I feel that everybody deserves to just have studings handed.
Speaker 1: Now we're talking about the different discrepancies, whether it be
Speaker 1: mental disorders or different pre existing conditions that may and
Speaker 1: to fear with that, that's different. But just to say, okay, everybody,
Speaker 1: come on up and jump on the bandwagon. You didn't
Speaker 1: put in the word you know what. We can say that.
Speaker 1: But when we think about this, let's just talk about
Speaker 1: the houselessness crisis that is existing and rampant right now
Speaker 1: across this country. You can go to any major metropolitan
Speaker 1: city in the United States of America, and you can
Speaker 1: even go to some small podunk towns that aren't even
Speaker 1: on the map, and you find not just poor people,
Speaker 1: but homeless people who are begging for money. Now they
Speaker 1: some of them, we want to say they're lazy, they
Speaker 1: don't want to work, but they are comprised of several
Speaker 1: different groups. One, you still have people who have been
Speaker 1: in war as far back as visaible mental disorders. Absolutely too.
Speaker 1: You have other people who have been abused and have
Speaker 1: other issues mentally, psychologically and otherwise. You have these people
Speaker 1: who went to war who thought that they come back
Speaker 1: and be normal, but they're not because that is not
Speaker 1: our nature, that is not our condition. Now the other
Speaker 1: people you have on the street. Now you have people
Speaker 1: who have drug addiction. Now, when it was cracked, it
Speaker 1: was it was a criminal problem. Now that it's heroin
Speaker 1: and meth it's a health condition. But you have a
Speaker 1: lot of people who we never thought about would be
Speaker 1: out on the street that are addicted to a chemical
Speaker 1: substance that is a health condition that they cannot control.
Speaker 1: And then you have people out there who two more groups. One,
Speaker 1: you have a bunch of folks who could not be
Speaker 1: accepted by their family, whether they came out to them
Speaker 1: or they decided to do something that their families disagreed with,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to be who they really were, and
Speaker 1: they weren't given the opportunity to so they were either
Speaker 1: put out or they left. And then last, you have
Speaker 1: people who once owned home and who were once normal
Speaker 1: and who once had jobs and they had an illness
Speaker 1: of cancer or heart disease or diabetes or liver failure,
Speaker 1: or they've lost a spouse and they'd spent everything they
Speaker 1: had trying to care for a child or a loved
Speaker 1: one or appearing and they lost their home. So it's
Speaker 1: not just the folks that are out there that that
Speaker 1: we're saying they don't They just don't want to do
Speaker 1: anything and they don't want to be up there. They
Speaker 1: make up the smallest segment of these four calf five
Speaker 1: categories that people wind up on the streets in something happened,
Speaker 1: and somebody's got to care about those people. And somebody's
Speaker 1: got to care about those people. And because it's easy
Speaker 1: to say they just don't want to do anything, but
Speaker 1: that's the label that they tried to put on us.
Speaker 1: They try to call us lazy when we were working
Speaker 1: as slaves twelve hours a day from sun up to
Speaker 1: sun down, and now we're lazy. No, we're not lazy.
Speaker 1: We just don't want to work for free, or you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps saying that you know, our language is improper when
Speaker 1: you've stolen everything away from us. So we had to
Speaker 1: to conjure up what we could muster. I'm sorry, but
Speaker 1: that's the BS because we will allow Milannia Trump who
Speaker 1: never mastered the English language. And now if you go
Speaker 1: to a restaurant at the drive through, those are people
Speaker 1: that have come here from Mexico and other places, and
Speaker 1: often that accident is so thick you can hardly understand
Speaker 1: what they're saying. So we can't use that anymore. We
Speaker 1: can't say that the people can't talk because you got
Speaker 1: folks here from all over the world that haven't mastered
Speaker 1: the English language, and we've worked so hard to master
Speaker 1: the English language and sound like the master that in
Speaker 1: some ways we've lost our culture and our our identity. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I mean. I think a lot of that
Speaker 1: was stripped away even coming over here. You know, the
Speaker 1: tongue was stripped away, the language of communication. So even
Speaker 1: as you're saying, like the disparities that when it comes
Speaker 1: to people of color, people who are natively from this land,
Speaker 1: especially black people, what we kind of had to make
Speaker 1: shift and put pieces together that I I didn't necessarily fit,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know when we look at this whole,
Speaker 1: you know, this bigger scope of the disparities when it
Speaker 1: comes down to people and everything that Dr King had
Speaker 1: to say, what would you say is a food for
Speaker 1: thought that you want people to walk away with. Number One,
Speaker 1: you have to take care of yourself. What does that
Speaker 1: look like? And what does that mean? You can't take
Speaker 1: care of somebody else. You can't help somebody else until
Speaker 1: you're taking care of you. Now, whatever that means for you,
Speaker 1: whether that involves meditation, whether that involves eating right, diet, exercise, um, reading, uh,
Speaker 1: talking to people who are uplifting, listening to shows like
Speaker 1: yours where they're talking about something that's on the positive.
Speaker 1: Look at that. Hey, hey, come on now, you gotta
Speaker 1: putting that plague on the Vitamin D podcast, and you
Speaker 1: better shine some light on your life how we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Send me Sevy, I'm seve In on your life. I
Speaker 1: stopped worrying about what everybody else is thinking. All these
Speaker 1: people that wound up doing something, there was a time
Speaker 1: when nobody believed that they could or they would. Go
Speaker 1: all the way back to Thomas Edison and Copernicus. People
Speaker 1: thought they were crazy, but they were focused and they
Speaker 1: were driven, and they accomplished something that we still celebrate today.
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King. They talked about him bad Black folks too.
Speaker 1: He gave one speech where he said, you know, I'm tired.
Speaker 1: It's exhausting. Yeah, how can I go on? When when
Speaker 1: even negroes don't really believe in me? How can I? How?
Speaker 1: And I get up every morning and do this. I'm
Speaker 1: tired and I'm I'm exhausted, and I can't go on.
Speaker 1: And then he says, and then I went back into
Speaker 1: prayer meditation, and I heard somebody say, Martin Luther King,
Speaker 1: stand up for justice, righteousness, stand up love, stand up
Speaker 1: and low I will be with you even until the
Speaker 1: end of the world. He's like he heard all these
Speaker 1: songs and all these things, and he kept coming back
Speaker 1: sitting by himself. He would have to go in the
Speaker 1: kitchen and then warm up a cup of coffee at
Speaker 1: one o'clock in the morning and listen to himself, listen
Speaker 1: to his higher self. And so so often we're listening
Speaker 1: to our lower vibrational self, the lowest common denominator, which
Speaker 1: is anger and baseness and rivalry. The higher elevation thought
Speaker 1: and consciousness is aware that we are all connected. And
Speaker 1: sometimes when somebody else does something, it really does don't
Speaker 1: have anything to do it with me. They're doing it
Speaker 1: because they're hurting so I can stop hurting. A friend
Speaker 1: of mine wrote a song that said, I love myself
Speaker 1: so much that I can love you so much that
Speaker 1: you can love you so much that you can start
Speaker 1: loving me. M m h. I gotta start there. I
Speaker 1: love myself so much that I can love you so much,
Speaker 1: so you can start loving you so much so you
Speaker 1: can start loving me. Isn't that Wow? That's the power
Speaker 1: of attraction. Yeah. And I'll say this this last thing
Speaker 1: about King. He was not a perfect man, so we
Speaker 1: place him on this pedestal and think, well, he did
Speaker 1: all of these great things. You don't have to be
Speaker 1: great to do something great. You don't have to do everything,
Speaker 1: but you have to do something. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be charismatic, but you have to care. And lastly, you
Speaker 1: don't even have to be brave. You just have to
Speaker 1: be willing bars complete. Did you receive it? I hope
Speaker 1: you caught it. Grab your no, but grab your pencil. Heck,
Speaker 1: they ought oppressed record to get that. Wow. Well, Mr
Speaker 1: Gerald c Rivers, I wanted to talk more about or
Speaker 1: and additionally about your voiceover career, about your dreams and
Speaker 1: what you do with the drama. For whatever reason, and
Speaker 1: this right now, this is what we needed. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: we do all of that, but all of that is
Speaker 1: part of the dream. Working with kids, the voiceover career,
Speaker 1: and cartoons and video games, all things that that I
Speaker 1: could not have imagined for myself. And when you think
Speaker 1: about it too, of just talking about you know, what
Speaker 1: m okay day means and what it means to have
Speaker 1: a dream, and just even and listening to those principles
Speaker 1: as were helped you get to where you are today,
Speaker 1: helped me get to where I am today. Heck, Ger,
Speaker 1: you remember when you first met me ows up there
Speaker 1: pleading well to work for a voiceover session, And I
Speaker 1: thank you. I thank you for just walking in your gifts,
Speaker 1: of loving your gifts so much that it had room
Speaker 1: to overflowing me because the countless conversations, the countless times
Speaker 1: that you said, don come over here and record. I
Speaker 1: appreciate you for speaking life on times that I wanted
Speaker 1: to give up and you said, don just hold on
Speaker 1: because just like King, fifty years had to pass before
Speaker 1: there was a black president. But you just gotta hold on.
Speaker 1: You got to hold the space for one another. Come on,
Speaker 1: we're holding the space for ourselves. But if you can't
Speaker 1: hold it for you, hold it for your kids, holding
Speaker 1: for your wife, holding for your mom and them, hold
Speaker 1: space for somebody else to be better today than they
Speaker 1: worry yesterday and believe that that's possible if you have
Speaker 1: to start with somebody else. Start with somebody else. But
Speaker 1: all of that stuff that ain't nothing. That's our job,
Speaker 1: that's what we're supposed to do. That's who we are,
Speaker 1: that's how we be, that's how we continue to grow
Speaker 1: and evolve. And then it's an each one teach one
Speaker 1: somewhere down the line. Uh, you keep getting me off
Speaker 1: on these tanents. But our problem is we think if
Speaker 1: I do something for you, you gotta do something for me,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't work that way. I just do something
Speaker 1: for you because that's what I'm supposed to do. The
Speaker 1: universe takes care of me somewhere else down the line.
Speaker 1: So all that stuff you talked about voiceover career movies
Speaker 1: and video games and cartoons and animated films and campaigns
Speaker 1: and selling products and you know next on NBC, all
Speaker 1: of that stuff that came about because I was available
Speaker 1: and of service every opportunity that I could. I wasn't
Speaker 1: so selfish to think I can't help you right now,
Speaker 1: because I gotta by my own thing right now. I
Speaker 1: gotta do my own thing, that is my own thing,
Speaker 1: that is my own thing being serviced to you and
Speaker 1: to somebody else who's at a different place than where
Speaker 1: I am, and the universe says, I got you, Thank you,
Speaker 1: good job. Now. I don't do that with the expectation.
Speaker 1: I do that because that's what I'm supposed to do,
Speaker 1: and then the rest of it takes care of itself.
Speaker 1: That's what it reminds me of the dream, because even
Speaker 1: with King, with his dream, it wasn't just solely about him.
Speaker 1: It was about everybody. And like how you said, everybody
Speaker 1: can eat off of it. There's enough food, there's enough clothes,
Speaker 1: there's enough jobs, there's enough cars, there's enough homes, there's
Speaker 1: enough dreams, and there's enough hope to take care of
Speaker 1: the world. Over and again, some things are a little
Speaker 1: out of balance, are a little out of kilter. And
Speaker 1: the reason and I've been doing these Martin Luther King's
Speaker 1: features for thirty plus years, and I never thought that
Speaker 1: I would still be doing that, But here I am
Speaker 1: still doing it as long as people want to hear it,
Speaker 1: and people want to hear because it's the truth. I
Speaker 1: have a model that just says I keep doing it
Speaker 1: and if I have to do it for millions of
Speaker 1: people for one person to get it, then I'll keep
Speaker 1: doing it until that one person gets it. And I
Speaker 1: say to audiences all the time, let that one person
Speaker 1: be you. Let that one person because we're waiting on
Speaker 1: what they call the watershed moment. There's people all over
Speaker 1: the planet. There's more conscious people right now than they've
Speaker 1: ever been in human history, and at some point we
Speaker 1: just need one more to represent the majority. And it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a tipping point where all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: there are more await people on the planet than there
Speaker 1: are people who are walking around as zombies and asleep.
Speaker 1: And the moment that happens, I think that's where the
Speaker 1: quantum leap takes place for humanity. So those of us
Speaker 1: who are conscious and who are awake, we're just walking
Speaker 1: around shaking people saying wake up, come on, it's okay,
Speaker 1: wake up, wake up because right now you're you're in
Speaker 1: a dream that's turned into a nightmare and you're scared.
Speaker 1: But wake up dream while you're awake. That's right, Lucid
Speaker 1: dream have waking dreams and decide what you're gonna dream about.
Speaker 1: Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: Gerald Rivers, we're talking about dreams, but essentially we're calling
Speaker 1: everybody to wake up. And you know what, Geral. Before
Speaker 1: you get out of here, I want you to share
Speaker 1: a little bit of King's speech, but not the traditional
Speaker 1: I have a Dream speech. I understand that you have
Speaker 1: another message for us, and it's from his uh. One
Speaker 1: of his speech is called the Dilemma and the Challenge.
Speaker 1: The Dilemma and the Challenge, bearing that I have dozens
Speaker 1: of these speeches committed to memory, but you're is just
Speaker 1: a short excerpt that will give some people something to
Speaker 1: think about outside of Martin Luther King's I Have a
Speaker 1: Dream speech. Take it away. The Dilemma and the Challenge
Speaker 1: facing the Negro today. You will remember that it was
Speaker 1: in the year of sixteen nineteen when the first Negro
Speaker 1: slaves landed on the shores of this great nation. They
Speaker 1: were brought here from the souls of Africa, and the
Speaker 1: Negro lived me this system of slaverty for two hundred
Speaker 1: and forty four years. For all of these years, he
Speaker 1: was a friend to be used and not a person
Speaker 1: to be respected. And even after Slavor ended, the Negro
Speaker 1: realized eyes that he was confronting a new type of slavery,
Speaker 1: because racial segregation is nothing but slavery covered up with
Speaker 1: certain niceties of complexity. And in spite of the fact
Speaker 1: that we have lived with physical slavery two hundred and
Speaker 1: forty four years, in spite of the fact that we
Speaker 1: have lived with segregated conditions for almost one hundred years,
Speaker 1: the demands of history require that we be as productive,
Speaker 1: as resourceful, and as responsible as the people who never
Speaker 1: had these disadvantages. Here we are, as a people having
Speaker 1: its perienced political domination, economic exploitation, segregation, and humiliation for
Speaker 1: well now three hundred and forty four years, and yet
Speaker 1: the demands of history require that we be as productive,
Speaker 1: as resourceful, and as responsible as the people who never
Speaker 1: had these disadvantages. This is our dilemma. He who gets
Speaker 1: behind in a race must forever remain behind or run
Speaker 1: faster than the man in front. This is our dilemma.
Speaker 1: But this dilemma is at one and the same time
Speaker 1: a great challenge. We are challenged to mobilize our resources.
Speaker 1: We are challenged to mobilize all the constructive forces that
Speaker 1: we can muster to make a creative contribution in the
Speaker 1: life of our nation and of this world. And I
Speaker 1: would like to suggest this afternoon some of the things
Speaker 1: that we must do to grapple with this dilemma and
Speaker 1: meet the challenge of our First of all, we must
Speaker 1: develop and maintain a sense of dignity and in self respect.
Speaker 1: We must not allow anybody or any force to make
Speaker 1: us feel that we do not count. We must believe
Speaker 1: in our souls that we are worth food, that we
Speaker 1: are somebody, that we are significant, And we must walk
Speaker 1: the streets every day with this sense of dignity, in
Speaker 1: this sense of somebodyness. Wow, oh wow, that was amazing.
Speaker 1: I was if you're talking, I didn't even realize I was.
Speaker 1: I was still on mute. Gerald WHOA the dilemma and
Speaker 1: the challenge, And I think it I think it speaks
Speaker 1: to that Georgia's situation that all of a sudden, there
Speaker 1: were things they said we couldn't do, and now we don't.
Speaker 1: Flipped Georgia, and in turn, we flipped the Senate, and
Speaker 1: Stacy Abrams did it with dignity and self respect, and
Speaker 1: we accomplished that by recognizing our power, remembering who we are.
Speaker 1: You're here, here, here, all those who are near and
Speaker 1: far here the message, Oh dear, oh wow, thank you
Speaker 1: so much. All good in the neighborhood. So I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed this episode. I hope you feel inspired. I
Speaker 1: hope that you walked away knowing that you are more
Speaker 1: because you deserve more, because you already are what you are.
Speaker 1: And um, if you love this and you want to
Speaker 1: find out more from Gerald, you want to follow him
Speaker 1: on social media at Gerald see Rivers on Twitter and Instagram,
Speaker 1: and on Facebook it's Gerald dot C dot rivers um.
Speaker 1: And this is a man with a plan. You can
Speaker 1: catch him for voiceover work, book him as a master drummer,
Speaker 1: or you can just follow him and get inspired. Just
Speaker 1: as we've deale with this conversation, and um, you know
Speaker 1: we're back every Monday with more inspiring conversations and insights.
Speaker 1: And get this if you need even more Vitamin D
Speaker 1: in your life outside of this podcast, I want to
Speaker 1: make sure you follow me on social media. It's at
Speaker 1: Dawn day Speaks on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter wherever
Speaker 1: however you know where to find me. And so until
Speaker 1: next time, I want you to always remember you are
Speaker 1: your greatest assin.