One for The Books - How a Young Man Beat the Odds and Built a New Life for Himself

"Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done it's always your choice."~ Wayne dyer


Dwayne Betts grew up in Suitland, Md, a mildly rough suburb of Washington DC, where for several of his teen years he walked the fine line between a honest life and one of crime – although he was a promising student, he hung around with the wrong crowd, experimented with light drugs even if he never sold them, rode in stolen cars but didn't steal them himself until a fateful night in 1996, when in a “moment of insanity”, as he calls it, he made the wrong decision and carjacked a man outside a mall.

He admitted his guilt, was charged as an adult and sentenced to nine years behind bars. He spent his time in prison reading everything he could put his hands on, and once he finished serving his sentence, he attended college, and earned a bachelor degree from the University of Maryland. He also started a reading club for young men and wrote a 237-page memoir entitled “A Question of Freedom”. His mission is to create reading programs for young inmates, hoping that the power of the written word will touch their lives as much as it touched his. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/01/AR2006100101160.html

Dwayne Betts is seen as an inspiration for trouble youths, but on a larger scale he can be considered a role model for most of us. Regardless of individual circumstances, most of us have made poor choices at one time or another and engaged in acts we have regretted dearly, but few have actually used those consequences to better themselves.

Whenever reactions catch up with actions, we have one choice to make – we can allow past transgressions to get the best of us by knocking down our spirit and let us roll in a puddle of self-pity and guilt, or we can take stock of reality, and use the tools we have available to us to rise against all odds.

Dwayne Betts could have chosen to beat himself up for the poor choices he made - and could have continued to wallow in the pain he had inflicted on those who loved him and suffered because of his actions - but if he had done so he would be just another statistic, a repeat offender who can’t move from the stump because he doesn’t believe he has other options.

Instead, he never felt cornered because he saw his escape in books. He accepted he had done wrong, paid his price and found the silver lining in the cloud; now he is enjoying the rewards of his inner strength.

All situations, no matter how negative they appear, can be turned into positives – all it takes is to make a conscious choice to not be defeated.

Living One Life at a Time - A Reflection Upon Allowing Others to Make their Own Mistakes

“Letting go doesn't mean we don't care. Letting go doesn't mean we shut down. Letting go means we stop trying to force outcomes and make people behave. It means we give up resistance to the way things are, for the moment. It means we stop trying to do the impossible--controlling that which we cannot--and instead, focus on what is possible--which usually means taking care of ourselves. And we do this in gentleness, kindness,
and love, as much as possible.” ~ Melody Beattie


I read a wonderful article on the News & Observer yesterday, in which a mother described how hard it had been for her to allow her children to work on their projects without becoming involved, even if it meant that the projects turned out far from perfect.

Their journey began a few years before, when they joined a series of free kids workshops offered by Home Depot. After the first workshop, the mother was not too sure things had gone as well as she had hoped – little fingers were smashed, the bird house the kids had built was falling apart, and clothes were ruined by wood glue – yet, as time passed, the kids learned important skills.

The hardest thing during the workshops, the mother explained, was to sit back and watch the kids make mistakes without intervening; the greatest lesson, she realized, had been her own – it didn’t matter if the projects weren’t perfect; what mattered was that the children were learning how to read instructions and use tools more efficiently. Mom’s input was not needed.

Allowing others to make their own mistakes is probably one of the greatest challenges we can ever face. Especially in the case of people we love, we wish we could live their lives for them when we feel they are not doing a good job of it on their own, so that we could “fix” their mistakes and help them live a happier existence.

Each of us has a different path to follow, which is not always for others to understand. Even if all we find at the end of the path we chose is misery, we have the right to make those mistakes and learn from them.

Letting go of the control we wish to have on the lives of others is, in many ways, synonymous of letting go of judgment. We can’t expect to understand the many reasons behind the choices others make, just as we can’t truly know what is best for them; all we can do is accept their choices as their own right, and move on with our own lives. We can only live one life at a time – ours or other people’s.

We can’t control the way someone else feels or acts, but we do have ownership on whether we allow their choices to affect our immediate world. By focusing less on what others do, and more on what we choose for ourselves, we can grow in ways we didn’t think possible, and the weight we carry for them is suddenly lifted.

We can’t change others, but we can change ourselves. And by letting others follow their own destiny we might be pleasantly surprised in the end.

The Singer with a Fat Voice

“Assumptions allow the best in life to pass you by.” ~ John Sales


Yesterday morning I was working on one of my sites while my daughter was drawing a picture beside me. Since I had turned on the sound on my laptop earlier to listen to a song, the soundtrack of the novel video trailer came on. Without even lifting her eyes from the paper, Morgan said: “I like that song mommy. Is that guy fat like a teddy bear?”
Caught by surprise at the random question, I asked her what she meant, so she looked up at the screen and said again: “Where is the guy who is singing the song? I think he is big like my teddy bear.”

Since the only images on the video are related to scenes in the novel and don’t show the song performer, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJPL1wqlV_Y her assumption gave me food for thought. Why would a four-year-old think someone is overweight just from hearing a voice in a video, if she had no visual trigger that would support that assumption? I showed her what the singer really looked like in another video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8CNmEUVDjE, and she seemed surprised - the image she had conjured in her mind and the actual person didn’t match at all.

One of the greatest flaws of human nature is to assume facts before we even bother to check if our impressions are aligned with reality. We create a mental picture of someone and seal it in our mind with the fire of prejudgment, ready to jump to unsupported conclusions that are nothing more than shaky speculations.

The fact that a four-year-old was ready to prejudge someone’s appearance from the sound of his voice suggests that this type of behavior is a product of nature rather than nurture - to my knowledge nobody has ever taught my daughter that large men have throaty voices and small men don’t. If nature is at fault, it is twice as important to condition ourselves to never assume and prejudge, at least until we have gathered evidence to support our assumptions.

I believe this concept applies to most areas in our lives. Stereotyping leads to undesirable and unwarranted drama, and it explains nothing about the unique personalities of the people we encounter. When we meet anyone, we should only be clear on one thing: we know nothing about them, and prejudging an individual’s potential, character or lifestyle can only blind our ability to see the real person standing in front of us.

By conjuring a mental image we feel in control and less vulnerable to surprises. We are naturally inclined to categorize and label our experiences, and we are afraid to give strangers the benefit of a blank board, even if what we rationalize is not necessarily reality.

After watching the two videos, Morgan went back to her picture, not giving this matter any further thought, but I hope that some day – when the time comes for her to step out into the world – she will benefit from having learned that what we assume is not always what is.