Entries from January 2005 ↓

I got an email Tuesday. A college friend of mine died Monday of a heart attack. His birthday is on the 27th of this month, exactly two weeks after my own. He too would have been 45.

The email came with dozens of cc�s to other friends and college classmates, many of whom I haven�t seen or spoken with in some cases, for more than 20 years. Ironically, one of them, with whom I do stay in touch, was himself featured in the January issue of Black Enterprise magazine. In a story on health issues, he revealed how his high blood pressure very nearly killed him. A chance medical examination caught it just in time. As well as I know him, I never knew his situation had been so serious. He is also 45.

All day and into the evening, our network of friends posted replies to the original message to share our grief, and in a strange way reconnect with one another. They always say you should never wait until something bad happens before you have a reunion. We may have waited too long in this instance but I hope we now make up for the lost time.

Sometime this spring or summer, when the weather gets consistently warm, some of us are just likely to jump out of a plane again. No dates have been set, I haven’t even talked it over with the fellows. I just know when we did it the first time two summers ago, everybody was itching to go again. Last year’s trip fell through (a lot of last minute backing out by some invited first-timers), so I’m just gonna put the word out early enough now for folks to start thinking about it and getting up their courage.

Anybody down?

From “Beyond Vietnam,” April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, New York City.

As I have walked among the desperate, rejected and angry young men [in the ghettos] I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked � and rightly so � what about Vietnam? They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today � my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.

… Now, it should be incandescently clear that no one who has any concern for the integrity and life of America today can ignore the present war. If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over.

… Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

In 1957 a sensitive American official overseas said that it seemed to him that our nation was on the wrong side of a world revolution. … I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a “thing-oriented” society to a “person-oriented” society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. … A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: “This is not just.” It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: “This is not just.” The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

Alternet provides other King commentaries that are still relevant today.

So I was idly surfing through my blogroll and realized there are some definite MIAs out in the blogosphere. Folks who haven�t posted in a month or longer. I wondered what was up.

If you know anything about these bloggers, leave a comment. If you are the person in question, tell us what�s up, or better yet, post something. We miss y�all: Anfanee, Honey for Oshun, Hypnotiqone, Mermaidhips, Novaslim, and RenaissanceSistah.

Meanwhile, let�s welcome back Ryan, after a short absence and a relocation. Charles also took time off before coming back but his move was only in cyberspace.

Finally, these three guys started blogs last year then just seemingly abandoned them with no explanation: Edge of Night, Darrell�s Blog and GotNathan.

I don�t think it�s on the Chinese calendar but this year it symbolizes my birthday. (Hint: the caliber is the same as my age.) Now I was all set to make this a simple birthday wish to myself, until I read this and it got me to thinking about my own road to this date.

When I tell people my age, I usually get either of two reactions, �Wow, you�re that old?� or �Man, you look good for your age.� Both responses are rooted in some pre-conceived notion of what people my age are supposed to look like. I guess I was supposed to be broken down, grey haired, walking with a cane, or some other such nonsense. Certainly nobody in their 40�s can still have all their teeth!

I think it speaks more to our collective feelings and fears around age, and aging, that our images of what life must be like for those older than us are so often negative. Old(er) age is equated with loss–of health, vitality, energy and attractiveness–and presumably with it, our social life, sex appeal and ability to still �get some.� And who wants that?

Rarely, is advancing age equated with increased knowledge and experience, personal contentment, focus on life goals and accomplishments, and a greater awareness of what it takes to achieve them, all things I�ve come to recognize. And it took me every single year of my life to get to this point. Twenty years ago, I too was in a hurry to get somewhere, but I didn�t have a clue where I really wanted or needed to be. I measured myself against anyone whose life seemed more exciting than mine, and always felt inadequate. I hadn�t spent any time getting to know me or appreciating all that I had to offer irrespective of anyone else.

The simple fact is unless you plan on dying, you�re only gonna get older. Old age is only a bad thing if you view it that way. When I think of all the people I knew who never lived up to this age, I am reminded that every day we get to wake up and see another sunrise is a blessing. We shouldn�t spend time worried about what we haven�t done, but instead look forward to all that we want to do, knowing that there is plenty of time to constantly find new things that interest and amuse us. At any age.