For Brothers Only - the dash at your side - Brief Article

Ebony, Oct, 2001 by Kevin Chappell

EVERYBODY gets one, even Brothers, even the ones who complain that they don't ever get anything but a hard way to go. Most of us, however, don't know what to do with it. In fact, most of us live day after day never knowing that we have it, that we have in our possession something so powerful, something with so much potential that the possibilities boggle the mind.

What we all have is a dash. From the time we're born until that fateful day each of us will take our last breath, our dash is always by our side, serving as our ultimate running buddy--charting everything we've ever done, everything we've ever said. Its sole purpose is to be our life's keeper of record, to compile the good, the bad, the triumphs and the disappointments in our life, and when we are gone, present its findings to the world as the total picture of who we were.

From its place on our tombstone, right there between our birth date and death date, this dash takes up so little space, that it is hardly ever noticed. But it represents so much. While the two dates simply tell when you lived, it's the dash that tells how you lived.

So what are you going to do with your dash?

Will you sharpen the end and use it as a sword, slaying all of the challenges and conquering all of the opportunities that come your way? Or will you dull the tip and use it as a crutch, complaining that it's not like the White folks', that it doesn't get treated as well as theirs? Will you use it to complain about the daily battering the racists and the bigots give to it, or how even Sisters don't understand it?

Will you rise to the challenges your dash presents, nurture it, respect it, give it the attention it needs to grow? Or will you hide from it, run from it, shortchange it, weigh it down with a laundry list of would-haves, should-haves and could-haves? Will you squander it, take it for granted, never realize the true power it possesses?

Will you use your dash to help someone, to love someone, to stand for something--maybe something as monumental as ridding the world of poverty, or something local as ridding the neighborhood park of pimps and pushers? Or will you use your dash to only look out for No. 1?

It was only recently that I came to know my dash. Oh, sure, I often thought about my life, about where it has taken me and where I wanted to go. But between the daily hustle and the weekly grind, I never thought about the big picture, how daily events added up to become what would be known as my life, how every person I met, every thing I did had a certain amount of importance attached to it. In a society that celebrates birth, celebrates birthdays, mourns death and remembers the anniversaries of death, I, like many others, rarely gave life itself the attention it deserved.

A Brother told me once that the hardest thing that he ever learned was how to be positive, how to take the challenges of life, and instead of letting them get him down, use them to his advantage. Black men, from an early age, have been conditioned to look at many things in a negative way. And who can blame us? It doesn't take long for us to figure out that whatever is to be gotten out of life, we're always the last to get ours, that the short end of the stick has our name written all over it.

But it doesn't have to be that way. We all know people who seem to be full of life, seem to live every day with a passion, seem to keep an upbeat disposition, even in the face of adversity. What's their secret? Maybe their secret to living a fulfilling life is the same as an artist creating a beautiful portrait: Assign the utmost importance to every stroke of your brush. If you do that, you might just find that creating a masterpiece is easier than you think.

In the end, it all comes down to whether you want your life to be full of accomplishments and triumphs, laughter and good times, or anger and frustration, bitterness and disappointments. Will you spend your life complaining about what you don't have, or cherishing what you do have? Will you spend your life wishing you could change the past, start over, or will you instead choose to make a vow to your family, to your homies, to your lady, to your mama, or just to yourself, to take control of your dash, take it in a different direction, one that includes achieving, excelling, realizing your full potential, overcoming your past obstacles?

No one can tell you how to make the most out of your dash. I can't tell you. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with mine. In the end, only you can make that decision, because only you have to live--and die--with it.

So, Brother, what are you going to do with your dash?