Life in the Hood......

Tupac once said that life in the hood, is all good for nobody. I musta a heard that lyric so many times but it never really made me think twice. But when you think about it, this for us folk that live deep in the hood, the sh*t ain't really all good. I mean sometimes if you drive out the hood and you see the slow transition between the borderlines.........streets get wider, curbs get cleaner, houses get better lookin', colors get brighter, you start seein' trees and birds flying, green grass. You start seeing crazy stuff like, I don't know, antique and futuristic furniture stores. You don't see as many liquor stores. You see restaurants where they have space for you to eat outside. I mean I love livin' in the hood at times, but sometimes I swear it just makes me sick to my stomach when I see the condition of my people, and the condition of other people. Why can't we live like that? We like to eat outside too. There are alot of intelligent people I have come across on this website and seem like they are well on their way to leading successful lives. My question is this, have many of you ever thought of just writing off the community, or actually coming back to maybe make life in the hood a lil' bit better......

Personally, I never lived a day in my life in the ghetto. However, if the carshop that my friends and I want to open up gets off the ground, I'd like for all the satellites to be right there on that boarderline between the ghetto and the nicer section (hopefully downtown). I want to be able to help our community like my dad does. But to me, you have to help yourself before you can help others. Once you know how to get yourself out of the ghetto, and have experienced it, then you'll be better at helping others. Am I wrong?

The problem with the hood is not the living conditions. The problem is the minds. Most people in the hood may not be satisfied living there but they never aspire to get up and do something better. The hood has been in existence for a relatively short period of time, just a couple generations. Back when the projects were first built they were great places to live. People had fun they were safe. Now over time they have become dangerous and dirty places. Now people don't want to live there any more. There are tons of reasons for the transition of the black living experience but that is not the point of this post. The point is no matter what the living conditions may be there is still room to live a wonderful life. Happiness is not found on a clean street or an exotic neighborhood. It is found inside as love, for oneself and for everyone else. So, to answer your question, yes I have thought about trying to help out the community several times. The more I learn about myself, the more I realize about the world around me. And currently I think that it is going to require the desire from within the community to change their own lives however they want. I guess we want to help out the community because we see suffering within the community. Everyone wants to eliminate suffering somehow. How can we show people that there is a way to live without suffering? First we have to find that out for ourselves and then show by example. Each of us like mini-buddhas affecting whatever we can within our realm of influence. So it is a gradual process that begins within ourselves, The Man In The Mirror, my homeboy Jackson put it best.

I used to live in a pretty terrible neighborhood in Atlanta, and I thank God that my mother was smart, resourceful, and lucky enough to pull her children out of that environment. The thing that gets me is, there are still people there who lived there when I was there. They're content to remain in that drug infested, **** ridden hellhole for the rest of their lives, and they actually like it. Yes the ghetto has its good times, and growing up there has had a huge impact on the person I am today, but I seriously think that it's time for our people to move on. It's time for us to get fed up with our brothers and sisters being among the dregs of society and do something about it. Personally, I think the very first step is EDUCATION.