Inside My Head

Your religion means nothing. Your God is fictional and your beliefs are pointless. The higher power that I serve is the only true divinity so your obedience is summarily expected or you can expect dire consequences. As extreme or preposterous as this may sound, some choose to go to battle with ideals like this in mind. The question is where is the rationale in this?

Looking back in history, biblical history to be exact, the first religious war was fought over land. In the bible, the first chapter of Joshua tells of God speaking to Joshua telling him that he and the rest of the Israelites are to take possession of land stretching as far as Lebanon to the Euphrates. In this book, God gave the Israelites permission to destroy any opposition which mainly included the Canaanites in order for the Israelites, his chosen people to have this land. According to my research, God’s purpose for this was so that his people would have a land all to themselves apart from the idol worshipping Canaanites. God didn’t want the Israelites to bow down before false gods like the Canaanites were doing. With God’s help, Joshua conquered this promised land in 6 years and divided it among the Israelite’s 12 tribes. Ultimately what happened is that once this generation of Israelites passed, many of their children disobeyed God and started worshipping idols like the Canaanites did.

Concerning the reasons to go to war, St. Augustine is credited as the first person to create a just war theory. This doctrine has four strict conditions which include that the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave and certain, all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective, there must be serious prospects of success, and the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. According to this theory, just cause for war can be to recapture things taken or to punish wrongdoers, but the injustice suffered by one party must significantly outweigh that suffered by the other. The theory also directs how combatants are to act in war and in recent years, some theorists have also added a guide on behavior after war which includes that just cause for termination is if there has been a reasonable vindicdation of the rights that were violated in the first place and if the aggressor is willing to negotiate the terms of surrender.

In my research of monotheistic religions, I have yet to come across any religion where the divinity is a God inclined to war. Many would claim the Muslim religion promotes a belief in fighting according to the concept of the jihad. This is a religious duty of Muslims that translated from Arabic means strive or struggle. It is commonly used in the expression “striving in the way of Allah(al-jihad fi sabil Allah)”, but this expression can also be thought of in terms of Christians striving to be Christ-like. Considering that in mind, Allah and Christ are seen as peaceful deities. The five pillars of islam are five duties that every Muslim is responsible for and these duties are Shahadah(profession of faith), Salah(ritual prayer), Zakah(alms tax), Sawm(fasting during Ramadan), and Hajj(pilgrimmage to Mecca). Some consider the jihad to be the sixth pillar of Islam, but even if that was so, no other pillar mentions anything resembling war or conflict.

“Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.” Romans 12:19 KJV. If every biblical reference I have found from Psalms 46:9, Matthew chapter 24, Luke 3:14, to Hebrews 12:14 have all pointed to God being a Lord of peace then how can war be justified? My only answer in this is man. According to Genesis chapter 3, we are all flawed creatures and in our many flaws, we tend to twist and misconstrue words until they are bent to our own desires. So called “religious” wars have been fought and are still being fought over not just opposing ideals, but also over desired land. I further believe that there is no justification for war based on religion because every man and woman has free will and it is our free will that allows us to decide who we serve and how we intend to serve our God.

The want to build muscle is the easiest part to working out. The hard part comes with knowing what to do in order to build muscle. Fear not because in this article I will tell you the 7 methods of madness that have not only helped me train my clients, but have also helped me put on a few pounds of muscle.

1. WORK SMART - Training 6 hours a day seven days a week is a GREAT example of working hard, but it’s definitely not any example of working smart. Even the most educated of gym rats tend to harbor the idea that a long workout that leaves you sore three days later is the only kind of workout to have, but this experience of delayed onset muscle soreness(DOMS) causes a few problems a lot of people are unaware of. One problem to consider is the fact that the sorer you are, the least likely you will want to train any given day. Another issue is the fact that building muscle requires tearing down muscle fibers and building them back up, but if you’re in a constant state of tearing down, there is no chance for your muscles to rest and rebuild.

2. MOTIVATION - What is the force that pushes you to want more? Are you compelled by how others look at you, or do you like to see yourself in the mirror and marvel at the progress you’re making towards the person that you want to be? EVERYONE is motivated by some internal or external desire. The trick is to find out where your motivation lies and use it to your advantage. The main reason motivation is so important is because there will be days that you won’t want to work out or you won’t want to do that last rep, but your motivation will be there to push you along your way.

3. SHOCK - When you dive into cold water, your blood vessels instantly constrict while the blood from your hands and feet move to your abdominal area as you fight for every gasping breath of air you can take in. The same shock your body feels from this experience is akin to the shock you need to give your body in the gym. If you have been doing the same workout routine or training on the same days for the past 3 years, and wonder why you have yet to see any progress, it’s because of the predictability. You can shock your body by adding or subtracting reps, using new exercises to work the same muscles, or just by changing the days in which you train. The main thing to remember is that once your body gets used to a certain workout or a certain training schedule, if you want to get stronger or see more muscle, it’s time for a change.

4. EAT AND DRINK SO YOU CAN BE MERRY - Benjamin Franklin once said, “Eat to live, but don’t live to eat.” I don’t know whether or not Franklin hit the gym, but there is great truth to what he said because a lot of people feel that in order to lose weight or maintain a certain weight, they should eat only once a day. STOP IT! I can’t stress this enough, but trying to survive off one meal a day is like trying to put a cup of gasoline into an SUV and then taking a 3 hour drive. Eventually the car, like your body, will run out of gas and stop. If you haven’t heard it yet, the best benefit of eating 4 or even 5 times a day is that eating more causes you to eat smaller portions because you get fuller faster, and your body has a constant and consistent amount of calories to burn which help to burn fat. As far as water goes, the benefits of drinking it go beyond it simply hydrating you especially during and after workouts. Lack of water is the #1 trigger of daytime fatigue, water helps shut down midnight hunger pangs, drinking 8-10 glasses a day can ease back and joint pain in 80% of its sufferers and decrease the risk of colon, breast and bladder cancer by at least 45%.

5. HUMBLE CONFIDENCE - There is no one reading this that can go to their gym and put every 45 lb. plate that’s there on a bar and bench press it. With that said, the weight you can or can not lift doesn’t matter. Just because the guy next to you can squat 405 lbs. but you start shaking under 135 lbs. isn’t a reason to give up working out or even get frustrated. Humility is necessary in the gym because it makes you realize that as long as the weight you’re using exerts your muscles, then you will build muscle. At the same time that you have to be humble and not use more weight than you can handle, you also have the confidence that the more you work out with a weight that challenges you, the easier it will be to move to a heavier weight. Even for those who mainly choose to do cardio, the more you run, bike, or walk, the longer you’ll be able to go.

6. FIRE - In my gym, I work out with a group of powerlifters. Before one of them starts a challenging set, they scream “GIVE ME SOME FIRE!” and the guy who’s spotting them will slap them in their back…HARD. Now I’m not suggesting that you start hitting people in your gym or even get hit yourself, but you do need some fire when you’re working out. Fire is the passion, and the desire you have that makes you want to work out in the gym. Fire is the intensity that makes you focus on whatever goal it is that you have and fire gives you the determination to destroy that goal.

7. PLAN - The last method of this madness should have also been the first because just as it’s impossible to build a house that will not fall without blueprints, it’s impossible to build muscle without a plan. Keep in mind that the more detailed your plan is from the days you work out, to the exercises and amount of reps that you do, and the foods that you eat, the easier it will be for you to focus on your end goal because everything else is mapped out for you.

Now that you’ve read the 7 methods of madness, reread them now. You’ll see that in these methods lies a pattern. No method stands alone just like these 7 can not be whittled down to 6 or 5. When you start with a plan to help you build muscle, you start to develop the motivation that you need to get into the gym. The smarter you work, the quicker you see results thus the more fire you’ll have to work out. Eating and drinking properly will help you maintain the work you’re doing in the gym and as long as you’re humbly confident, you won’t overload yourself to the point of injury, but you will continuously shock your muscles so that you will see growth.

           “Knowledge is power”. We’ve all heard that before, but I don’t buy this saying. I have a new one for you…

“KNOWLEDGE DOES NOT EQUAL POWER WITHOUT THE COURAGE TO USE IT!”

           This blog is just as much reinforcement for me as it is for anyone else who reads it. I’ve heard the saying, “A jack of all trades, but a master of nothing” and whoever came up with that is absolutely right. We can spend our time absorbing all the books that contain all the information in the world until we have all the knowledge, but if we don’t use what we learn…we’re better off being idiots. 

            Take for example, a man with a brain full of trivia answers. He worked as a software engineer and I’m sure he made decent money doing that, but he decided to use his wealth of trivia and appeared on a game show 74 times in a row. That man’s name is Ken Jennings, and if you’ve never heard of him, just know that he won $2,522,700 playing on Jeopardy. The point here is that all the knowledge that he amassed was worth over $2 million and he used his knowledge to cash in on it.

            Then there’s a man who grew up in Brooklyn. He made money by hustling drugs and there are many who choose to only live that life, but the main thing is that there’s always a choice. This man decided to use his knowledge of hustling and his lyrical prowess and started an independent rap label with 2 friends. That label was Roc-a-Fella records and that man is Shawn Carter, better known as Jay-Z. Today, 11 years after he helped start his label, he is now the CEO of Def Jam Records and his assets include a highly successful clothing line called Rocawear, Armadale vodka, a New York club, and he owns a part of the New Jersey Nets. Your location does not equal your destination and Carter’s life is proof of that, but only because he uses what he knows.

            There will always be many more stories of people who possess great knowledge and have the courage to use it only to enjoy the rewards that their courage has reaped. On the flip side, there will also be many more stories of people who possess great knowledge, but didn’t have the courage to use it and ultimately squandered away their opportunity. You might not have knowledge of trivia, or the mind of a hustler, but whatever brand of knowledge that you do possess…don’t be afraid to use it. If you do find the courage to use it, chances are you’ll be one of the people that others get motivated from…otherwise, you’ll just be one of the ones needing motivation.

“People in this country are ready for change and hungry for a different kind of politics and for the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country…”. In case you haven’t heard, these were the words spoken by Michelle Obama. 31 words are all it took for her to make national headlines, but my question is would her words have mattered any less if she was a white man?

The point of my previous question is to question our own stance on the words of others. Whether we admit it or not and whether it’s consciously or subconsciously, there are a few buzzwords that another race or another sex can utter before we quickly pigeonhole them in the proper category we already assumed they should be in. There are women who have already sized up a man as a male chauvinist pig just like there’s been a man who has felt someone else was a nigger, a beaner, a camel jockey, a chink or a cracker, and all they needed was just the right amount of words to prove their opinion right. Based on what Mrs. Obama said, her words could be taken as someone who didn’t feel “American” until after her black husband won the U.S. democratic presidential nomination, or as commentarymagazine.com has put it, ” the pseudo-messianic nature of the Obama candidacy is very much a part of the way the Obamas themselves are feeling about it these days.” Even though I’m just hearing about her words this week, what strikes me as odd is that she said this on Monday…February 18th.

Without praising or condemning Mrs. Obama’s words, I can safely ask, can we ignore race and sex when it comes to the words of others? Yes, she just like everyone else, should be careful in the words they speak, but we also must get the whole story and not just the part we want to criticize. “…because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” This is the end of her statement, but does it make more of a headline to talk about a woman who is happy that people are doing more to show support for a man they want for president or to talk about a woman who feels she and her husband are near a god-like status? At this point, I simply “hope” that we can get over ourselves and work harder at not judging people for what they are, but for who they are.

• About a third of the male adult global population smokes.
• Smoking related diseases kills one in ten adults worldwide, in other words, it causes 4 million deaths.
• If these current trends continue, by 2030, one in six people will die from smoke related deaths.
• Someone dies from tobacco use every eight seconds.
• 10 million cigarettes are sold every minute.
• Between 80,000 and 100,000 children worldwide start smoking every day.
• In teenagers ages 13 to 15 worldwide, about one in five smokes.

Scared yet? Chances are if you’re a non-smoker, you’re flabbergasted by these numbers, but if you’re a hardcore smoker, you’re probably just lighting up. Honestly, that used to be me, the hardcore smoker. I could watch those truth commercials, and those commercials where 300 hearses would drive to the cemetery and every grave was for a smoker without even flinching. No matter how many cold, hard facts I could hear about smoking, secondhand smoke, and just how many people couldn’t stand the air that I breathed because it was filled with smoke, I could not be stopped. I write this now, for one reason alone…I quit.

Yes, after years of actually inhaling, I put my black and milds down. Granted, my “spectacular” feat only happened a week ago, but that’s still a week I haven’t lit up. Honestly, for anyone who is contemplating it, it’s not easy at all! I sometimes find myself holding my pen like a cigar, and even going so far as to puff on it, and from there, I deeply inhale the “smoke” before I finally let out a relaxed and satisfied exhale. Now take into consideration that my dad smoked from his teenage years up until his fifties and he only quit then because he developed emphysema which ended his life a couple of years later. His two brothers, my uncles, passed away from lung cancer, but even with this knowledge, I held fast to my fixation. Crazy isn’t it, but in every addiction lies a bit of madness. So if I didn’t quit because of family history, what finally ended my craving? No, it wasn’t the constant nagging from family because sometimes I smoked just to spite them. I have thought about all the smoking statistics, but even knowing that smoking can kill you, some people right now are still dying to smoke. The reason I finally gave up my habit is because I gave up my excuses to do it. I used to smoke because people would upset me, because I got full from eating, because I was taking a long drive and sometimes I’d smoke just because I “had” to have a cigar. Now of course it’s hard for me not to smoke and there are some who think that my “non smoking hell” is a bit ridiculous, but I’ve learned that one person’s mountain of a problem is only a molehill to someone else. Yes, people still upset me and I still drive, but every day my will gets a little stronger, and every day I find a new reason not to smoke simply because I am the reason I quit.

“Say hello to my little friend!”   There are those among us who have never seen 1983’s Scarface, but most people can at least recognize that this quote came from the movie.  On the other hand, “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast.  And when I run, I feel His pleasure.”, how many of us are able to say where this quote came from?  Hollywood cranks out movies, week after week and month after month, but at what cost?

It’s evident that the movie industry is a multibillion dollar business, but where is the substance?  The money generated from the majority of the movies we watch come at the expense of our own intelligence.  In 2006, two movies based on true stories, Akeelah and the Bee and Take the Lead both came out in April and together grossed $53,590,496 in the U.S.  One month earlier, Ice Age: the Meltdown grossed $195,330,621 while a month later, Mission Impossible 3 grossed $134,029,801.  Now it’s contrary to think that it was the actors that had something to do with poor sales because A Mighty Heart, the true story of Mariane Pearl, the widow of Wall Street Journal reporter, Daniel Pearl grossed only $9,176,787.  Now take into consideration that Tomb Raider: the Cradle of Life grossed $65,660,196 and both movies had Angelina Jolie as the main character.  Basically, no matter how well you dance or spell, you’re only entertaining if you’re animated and no matter how good you look, you need a gun in your hand to make the movie sell.

You’re hard pressed to find an intelligent movie, let alone a true story that is considered a blockbuster by Hollywood’s standards, but who is to blame for the technicolor ruin that is Tinseltown?  Is is the greedy studio executive, the producer, or maybe the director….no, the villain here is the guy who wrote this article and everyone who’s reading it.  Resident Evil: Extinction and the 239th Land Before Time were both able to come out because we spent the money on their predecessors.  Yes, I am happy to say there is a solution to end the lack of creativity and intelligence in Hollywood.  You can do it today and it will cost you absolutely NOTHING!  Simply put, if you don’t watch it, they won’t make it.

Public Enemy doesn’t have anything on this.  What I’m talking about now is brainwashing.  A racial, social, and political agenda that is so deeply entrenched in propaganda that we have become so blinded to it, but we do act accordingly to the plan.  Normally when we think of slavery, we think of people bound by chains and tortured with whips, but among us today, live those who are mentally enslaved even without their knowledge or permission.

How do you make a slave?  It’s a simple question, but so is, “how do you force an entire nation of people to live on small territories of land called reservations?”, or “how do you spread mass genocide?” and lastly, “are all “men” really created equal?”.  These are all simple questions, but even the steps to rationalize the answers are complicated.  In doing research on the topic of mental slavery, I ran across a speech on http://thetalkingdrum.com/wil.html that was supposedly written by someone named Willie Lynch.  It’s still unknown whether or not this is a real person, but there is a lot of truth in the speech.  It speaks of using fear, distrust, and envy against those you are trying to control until you eventually “break” them like you would a horse.  Looking back at pictures of people held in concentration camps, their eyes and faces are void of emotion and you can see how badly “broken” their spirits are.

In spite of all the evidence to the contrary, we would all like to believe that things like this would never happen to us.  The problem with that thinking is that you’ve probably already been enslaved, but just don’t know it.  In 1776, the Constitution said, “…all men are created equal”, so why did it take 12 more years for women to get the right to vote?  We live in a society of position and society demands that you adhere to your position without attempting to lower or raise yourself.  It isn’t uncommon for a white man to believe that he is more than qualified for a certain job, and the only reason he isn’t getting it is because of affirmative action.  It’s not uncommon for a black man to feel that the only ways to become rich are through sports, music, or by illegal means and there are still women alive today who were raised to be seen and not heard.  Many speak about how to change the nation, but before we can change a nation’s views, some of our own views need to be overhauled.

“Bravery - A quality of spirit that enables you to face danger or pain without showing fear.” Bravery is one of the most sought after, prized, and often coveted traits of a human being. We honor soldiers who showed bravery in the face of war and there are those of us who treat millionaire athletes as superheroes for battling through injuries or tough seasons. People spend countless hours categorizing those we would consider the brave ones and then spend more hours dissecting what it is that sets them apart from the average person. Bravery is the single thing that separates us from the accomplishment of a dream or from “the agony of defeat”.

Bravery does not come from the size of our muscles, the confidence in our stride or even from an extremely stubborn bordering on insane attitude when it comes to continuously attacking fruitless situations that continue to give the same results. To first get bravery, we must first get understanding. We have to understand our underlying fears that motivate our need for bravery. Fear isn’t just a deep anxiety about tangible objects like spiders or clowns, but any caustic feeling that eats away a person’s self-image and leaves them feeling powerless. Fear is a “gateway emotion” in the fact that fear breeds contempt for the next person who is in a seemingly better situation than us which can lead to envy and hatred. Before fear has a chance to take hold, we have to dig deep enough into our unconsciousness to first, find out what we fear, which is the beginning of bravery. As Bertrand Russell said, “To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”

As stated before, bravery is a quality of spirit which means that when properly built internally, no external force can rob you of your bravery.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” There it is, the first amendment in all its glory.  221 years ago, the forefathers of this country wrote a law that protects you from harm whenever you say whatever thought is on your mind.  The question is, can you handle yourself when the next person is able to do the same?

Tolerance is a fair and objective attitude toward those whose practices, race, religion, nationality and opinions differ from your own.  This means that although you may not agree with the speech of one person, or you may not understand the muslim celebration of Ramadan, or even if you among the company of a foreign person, as long as that individual is behaving in a peaceable manner, they have just as much rights as you do under our national laws. Many are quick to utter derogatory remarks against others and then run for the shelter of free speech, but when those same people face the same sort of remarks from others, they are quick to cry out in persecution.  America’s laws aren’t suited for one certain group of people, but the benefits of these laws stretch beyond racial, religious, social, and sexual barriers.

One of the greatest forms of intolerance I’ve been able to witness is the uproar against illegal “aliens” and the threat that they pose against our fair America.  This bothers me because there is not one among us outside of Native Americans whose roots can be traced back to an illegal alien ancestor.  They are called Native Americans because they were here before 1892 when 15 year old Annie Moore from County Cork, Ireland became the first immigrant to enter Ellis Island.  They were also here before April 1584 when Sir Walter Raleigh dispatched Philip Anadas and Arthur Barlowe from England to scout territory in these future United States.  Our ancestors made difficult journeys from distant countries to settle in this “free” world, but now that we’re here, what gives us the right for exclusivity?

Differing opinions are what this country was built on and it’s different perspectives on issues that allow us the ability to grow as a country.  Egocentricity and sociocentricity do nothing but hold back progression and breed negativity among fellow Americans and those who could be future Americans.

The first slaves came to Jamestown, VA in 1619 as indentured servants and were traded for food. 244 years later, former President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, but the recorded date for the last slave to be freed happened on June 19, 1865 in Galveston, Texas. Now in 2008, the United States has its first black presidential candidate, so have we finally overcome?

Racism has been and continues to be a learned behavior that is passed down from one generation to the next and is also brought about by one’s own fear of the unknown and of the differences of the next person. June 19, 1865 IS the day all slaves were “freed”, but freedom is only a word because the act of being free depends on all those involved to acknowledge and respect freedom. Examples supporting this run rampant throughout our nation’s history from the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1866 to the Southern states unanimously rejecting the 14th amendment of due process and equal protection under the law for all citizens. Former President Andrew Johnson went so far as to establish the “Black Codes” which severely limited the freedoms and citizenships of Southern Blacks. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was the congressional approval of equal rights to Blacks in public accomodations and jury duty, but in 1883, this law was invalidated by the supreme court on the grounds that the 14th amendment forbade states, not citizens, from discriminating. In 1887, Homer Plessy staged the first sit-in on a white-only railroad car, and was arrested and brought before Judge John Ferguson and even with Plessy’s argument that his civil rights had been violated, Ferguson found Plessy guilty. The case of Plessy vs. Ferguson was then brought before the supreme court and “separate but equal” facilities were ruled constitutional under the 14th amendment.

In the 1900’s even with the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909, the city of Baltimore, Maryland approved the first city ordinance designating black and white neighborhoods while 8 more cities quickly followed suit. On April 11, 1913, former president Woodrow Wilson’s administration began government wide segregation of work places, bathrooms and even cafeterias and restaurants. In 1915, filmmaker, D.W. Griffith, released the controversial “Birth of A Nation” which depicted Blacks as inferiors tricked into rising above their current situation by misinformed abolitionists and vindictive reconstruction congressmen who had betrayed Lincoln’s benign plans for the defeated South. This movie created black stereotypes that other film studios used for years to come and the success of this movie is evident in the $18 million dollars it grossed which translates to $360 million in these times. In the summer of 1919, there were approximately 21 different riots in various cities and states that were so violent and bloody, it was called the “red summer”, but arguably the deadliest racial confrontation happened June 1, 1921 in Tulsa, Oklahoma which destroyed a 30 square block area of a primarily black neighborhood and the exact number of people killed was never truly able to be determined.

Now that you have an idea of what blacks have had to go through, how much better off are we now? True enough, our ancestors suffered through much so that now we don’t have to. Black people enjoy the millionaire lifestyle as platinum rappers and celebrated athletes, but where is the Martin Luther King or Malcolm X of this generation? Is the majority of society happy to see blacks in the field of sports, but not as enthusiastic about a black person that chooses to flex their mental muscle instead? We are applauding 2008 as the year we have Barack Obama, but only 10 years ago in Jasper, Texas, James Byrd Jr. was killed by 3 whites by being bound with a logging chain and dragged to his death. We as black people have shown through the years that we won’t take racism lying down, but we as a nation also need to stand up and take more active strides against all forms of racial injustice.