Prince

Prince lived on stage for me as a role model who wrote, played guitar, and produced his own music. I never knew my life could be like that, passionate, genuine.

I thought maybe I too could earn a self-fulfilled prophecy and one day be a star.

Against belief, aggression, and a few scrapes getting out the door, I graduated with a couple of engineering degrees. I wrote software for leading companies across the nation.

But no one ever came to teach me how to believe in myself. And honestly, I felt my time was being wasted too much on worrying about roles and what they meant, instead of practicing the skills that I wanted others to see as talent.

That’s hard. That’s ego bruising and deflated. Those are walks of shame where head-held-high becomes the gospel of endurance, holding onto a promise that you never keep to yourself.

Was I going to get old and forget that I once had moves that I wanted everyone else to see me use on stage?

I felt like something essential was missed, that school and church didn’t teach and that family and friends were struggling to figure out. Unfortunately, we were also ignoring each other and how common our stories were. We were too close to see the thread we had in common and needed to overcome. It was a regret that we all sensed - that no one would ever come and teach any of us how to move, how to change belief, how to inspire growth, how to get out of the ghetto and make a better promise to us and the children we were raising.

Prince was gifted. There’s no doubt. But would his inspiration to me be the closest that I would ever get to knowing what an on-stage performance felt like? Could I learn to care for myself and make a difference in a life that mattered to me?

This was personal now. And, I needed to stop barking up the wrong trees because trees just want sunlight. And that’s what I was really missing. I needed nourishment.

Is it ok to admit being depleted of vitamin d? Yes. Will anyone else do anything about that for me? No. And that’s what I needed to learn. So I left my community on a quest to believe in myself and become productive with the way that I saw value in my life. Prince had shown me a greatness that I could relate to.