Two days ago, I finished all the lyrics for my Hip Hop "floetry" album- Paradise Found. It has been something that I have been talking about doing for the past two and a half years, but never actually put my mind to fully accomplishing it with vigor. Rapper T.I. once said in his track titled Goodlife that "fear ain't in the heart of me, I learned just do it, you get courage from your fears right after you go through it." These word ran through my head as I sat down after my anthropology class with the completely finished lyrics for my album before me; courage and confidence racing through my veins. I realized than that the reason I never really moved forward on finishing all the lyrics for this album before was because I was afraid. I was afraid that I wasn't a good enough lyricist/writer, that I had nothing worth saying, and more importantly that I wasn't capable of creating a full album- a finished product.
For the past few years I have had a habit of starting things but not finishing them to the best of my ability(if I finished them all). I had a lot of reason and excuses for this constant theme song in my life- being to impulsive, ADD, it not really being what I wanted to do, and flat out not knowing how. But I think the real reason why I struggled to finish things was due to my desire to see things realized to perfection immediately- if they were to be realized at all (which lead to procrastination). My desire to see things realized in a way that reflected nothing less than the absolute paradise within my mind often hindered me. I found that if what I was doing was not reflective of what was in my head/imagination, that I would eventually lose interest and end up not putting my best into it.
I now realize that the only way to craft your internal vision into reality is to bring as much of it into reality as you can in the present. Lets put it this way: if your dream is to plant beautiful plants, but you're currently only able to bring buds into the real world, than plant the buds and raise them to grow into the plants that you them to be. Sometimes we are more concerned with creating a perfect plant than we are with actually planting the bud we already have in the first place. This hinders us. We keep our newly created bud in the closet; to ashamed to bring it out and show it to the world. We think "I'll bring this bud out when it's fully grown." But how can that bud grow up to become the beautiful plant you want it to be if you only keep it locked away in the closet? Plants can't grow without sunlight, and it surely won't be getting any sunlight in that closet. What it will grow up to be (if it even manages to grow up at all) is a plant that is weak, frail, and disgusting to look at. The worst part about it is the more we look at them- dying in the confines of that closet-, the more you don't want to touch them. So what do we do? We end up leaving these poor excuses for plants in the back of our closets to rot away when all we had to do was give the damn buds some sunlight, water, and overall care.
We do this everyday to our dreams, ideas, endeavors, art, and true desires in life. We forget that it takes sunlight and exposure for our dreams to grow into realities. We forget that we can't water the bud of our ideas in the dark and expect them to become the plants that we envision them to be. I saw this unfold clearly when I finally started making progress with my album. For there are two things that have allowed me to finish the lyrics for this album in a relatively sort amount of time.
The first thing was that I began taking "unfinished" past lyrics- that I had kept in the dark- out of the closet of my notebook, computer, or mind and into the spotlight. I began showcasing my lyrics at local open mics(and still do), performing them in front of friends, and presenting them to any random group of people that I would get into conversation with. I began uploading some of what I thought might be in the album to online videos and blog post(began to realize that a lot of the poetry I have written belonged in a different album, apart from Paradise Found). It was only after doing this that, in a period of a month, that I was suddenly able to find- with relative ease- the lyrics or "buds" that represented the concept of my album- Paradise Found. Thus I learned that, in the race to fulfilling your dreams, it becomes much easier to run towards the finish line when you appreciate what parts of the race you have already finished. If your trying to write a book, appreciate the chapters you've already written. If your trying to lose 20 pounds, appreciate the 5 pounds you may have already lost. Be grateful for the great works that you have already done, and part of a greater dream is what those works will become.
Yet as I began to appreciate my own past works/lyrics, I soon discovered that I didn't have enough of them to make a full album. Thus, I had to plant new lyrical "seeds". This led me to the second thing I did, which was to make sure I planted those seeds directly under the sun; giving them all the light they needed to grow. Now this can pose a potential problem. For if those seeds and buds get a lot of sunlight but not enough water, they will eventually burn up and die. In other words, if you listen to what others have to say about your work too much, or continually showcase/perform your work without continually working on it (and re-working on it), your work will eventually wither away into to something that others- but more importantly you- will fail to see any worth in.
But you see that is actually the whole point of putting your work under the brightest of sunlight in the first place; cause then you have to water and re-water them to keep them alive. It was both the exposure to sunlight and consistent watering of my lyrical buds and seeds that allowed them to grow together into the perfect plants for my Paradise Found album. Shoot, I had to re-work this paragraph again- after already working and re-working it a bunch of times and then deleting some of it by mistake. In fact because of that, this paragraph got written far better than it had been when I first wrote it. My point is, when you realize that you have to take care of your ideas for them to grow into the realities you want them to be, you become the decider of whether your dreams or ideals truly live or die; instead of letting the world decide that for you.
In the process of planting paradise, many planters have chosen to give the deciding vote of whether their plants live or die to the world, or to their own doubts/demons, instead of giving the final decision to themselves. But you have to be willing to take control of your paradise in the face of those obstacles if it's something that you truly want("you get courage from your fear right after you go through it"). With that said, I leave you with this thought:
If you have something wonderful that you wish to bring into this world, don't focus on perfecting it first. Instead, focus on just producing it as it is, presenting it as it is, preparing it as it is. This will give you something to craft, cultivate, and more importantly create into becoming the very vision that you have always imagined it would be. I mean who knows, maybe it will be even better than anything you could have ever imagined. The best paradises usually are.
For the past few years I have had a habit of starting things but not finishing them to the best of my ability(if I finished them all). I had a lot of reason and excuses for this constant theme song in my life- being to impulsive, ADD, it not really being what I wanted to do, and flat out not knowing how. But I think the real reason why I struggled to finish things was due to my desire to see things realized to perfection immediately- if they were to be realized at all (which lead to procrastination). My desire to see things realized in a way that reflected nothing less than the absolute paradise within my mind often hindered me. I found that if what I was doing was not reflective of what was in my head/imagination, that I would eventually lose interest and end up not putting my best into it.
I now realize that the only way to craft your internal vision into reality is to bring as much of it into reality as you can in the present. Lets put it this way: if your dream is to plant beautiful plants, but you're currently only able to bring buds into the real world, than plant the buds and raise them to grow into the plants that you them to be. Sometimes we are more concerned with creating a perfect plant than we are with actually planting the bud we already have in the first place. This hinders us. We keep our newly created bud in the closet; to ashamed to bring it out and show it to the world. We think "I'll bring this bud out when it's fully grown." But how can that bud grow up to become the beautiful plant you want it to be if you only keep it locked away in the closet? Plants can't grow without sunlight, and it surely won't be getting any sunlight in that closet. What it will grow up to be (if it even manages to grow up at all) is a plant that is weak, frail, and disgusting to look at. The worst part about it is the more we look at them- dying in the confines of that closet-, the more you don't want to touch them. So what do we do? We end up leaving these poor excuses for plants in the back of our closets to rot away when all we had to do was give the damn buds some sunlight, water, and overall care.
We do this everyday to our dreams, ideas, endeavors, art, and true desires in life. We forget that it takes sunlight and exposure for our dreams to grow into realities. We forget that we can't water the bud of our ideas in the dark and expect them to become the plants that we envision them to be. I saw this unfold clearly when I finally started making progress with my album. For there are two things that have allowed me to finish the lyrics for this album in a relatively sort amount of time.
The first thing was that I began taking "unfinished" past lyrics- that I had kept in the dark- out of the closet of my notebook, computer, or mind and into the spotlight. I began showcasing my lyrics at local open mics(and still do), performing them in front of friends, and presenting them to any random group of people that I would get into conversation with. I began uploading some of what I thought might be in the album to online videos and blog post(began to realize that a lot of the poetry I have written belonged in a different album, apart from Paradise Found). It was only after doing this that, in a period of a month, that I was suddenly able to find- with relative ease- the lyrics or "buds" that represented the concept of my album- Paradise Found. Thus I learned that, in the race to fulfilling your dreams, it becomes much easier to run towards the finish line when you appreciate what parts of the race you have already finished. If your trying to write a book, appreciate the chapters you've already written. If your trying to lose 20 pounds, appreciate the 5 pounds you may have already lost. Be grateful for the great works that you have already done, and part of a greater dream is what those works will become.
Yet as I began to appreciate my own past works/lyrics, I soon discovered that I didn't have enough of them to make a full album. Thus, I had to plant new lyrical "seeds". This led me to the second thing I did, which was to make sure I planted those seeds directly under the sun; giving them all the light they needed to grow. Now this can pose a potential problem. For if those seeds and buds get a lot of sunlight but not enough water, they will eventually burn up and die. In other words, if you listen to what others have to say about your work too much, or continually showcase/perform your work without continually working on it (and re-working on it), your work will eventually wither away into to something that others- but more importantly you- will fail to see any worth in.
But you see that is actually the whole point of putting your work under the brightest of sunlight in the first place; cause then you have to water and re-water them to keep them alive. It was both the exposure to sunlight and consistent watering of my lyrical buds and seeds that allowed them to grow together into the perfect plants for my Paradise Found album. Shoot, I had to re-work this paragraph again- after already working and re-working it a bunch of times and then deleting some of it by mistake. In fact because of that, this paragraph got written far better than it had been when I first wrote it. My point is, when you realize that you have to take care of your ideas for them to grow into the realities you want them to be, you become the decider of whether your dreams or ideals truly live or die; instead of letting the world decide that for you.
In the process of planting paradise, many planters have chosen to give the deciding vote of whether their plants live or die to the world, or to their own doubts/demons, instead of giving the final decision to themselves. But you have to be willing to take control of your paradise in the face of those obstacles if it's something that you truly want("you get courage from your fear right after you go through it"). With that said, I leave you with this thought:
If you have something wonderful that you wish to bring into this world, don't focus on perfecting it first. Instead, focus on just producing it as it is, presenting it as it is, preparing it as it is. This will give you something to craft, cultivate, and more importantly create into becoming the very vision that you have always imagined it would be. I mean who knows, maybe it will be even better than anything you could have ever imagined. The best paradises usually are.
The Movement Continues...
Rhetorical Artz 
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