Never Knock A Good Thing

So a friend of mine that follows my blog (what's up girl)requested that I diversify the topics on my blog. Apparently, my blog has been reduced primarily to topics concerning relationship,career, self-feelings, racial, and gender issues. Even though these tend to be big issues in many people's lives, she mentioned that I am a person who's opinions are so dynamic and forward looking that I should share more of my every day conversations that I have with people on my blog. So I decided to do just that.

I guess the theme that has been running through many of the conversations that I have had recently is "Never Knock A Good Thing". It seems that many people have so many strong convictions in the world that they attempt to protect those opinions by harshly closing themselves to the opinions of others. I am a person who believes that people should have the strength of their convictions but I also believe in being open-minded and innovative. I also believe in sound common sense and not making a big deal over spilled milk.

To elaborate and to offer further clarification as to where I am headed with this discussion, I'll give a couple examples of some conversations that I felt that people were a little ridiculous.

Case in Point 1: Them Mother Africa People

I was at a business function not to long ago that was held at a bar. I ran into these two black men, some OGs, who were acting ridiculous. By ridiculous I mean they were basically accusing every black women that they talked to in the bar as being a prostitute. I initially thought that they were joking around and fucking with people, but I soon discovered that they were dead serious. I just shook my head at them, walked by, and said "Yall need Jesus. Imma pray for yall.". One of the guys response was "Don't say you are going to pray for me. Jesus is somebody that the white man made up. You should not go around worshipping false prophets my sista. Educate yourself before you go around with loose lips".

My response: "Whether or not Jesus is real or imaginary is besides the point. At least he stops people from killing people. You up here accusing your quote-unquote ebony goddesses of being prostitutes. How educated does that make you? Why you tryna take away the people's peace and happiness? Just let them believe so they won't kill each other. Shut-up and stop knocking down good things."

I mean personally, I am pretty universal about religion. I think the use of prophets is mainly to speak to a certain group of people because of differences in culture. Overall, the majority of major religions hold the same basic rules. The only difference between most major religions are usually cultural. Statistically, the most religiously fanatical countries tend to be the most volatile which contradicts the purpose of religion in the first place. But these religiously fanatical countries are also those that tend to be fanatical about everything...culture, politics, etc. In essence, the majority of us are basically serving the same god and overall believe in a set of basic commandments. The primary differences in religion usually center around gender roles, traditions including marriage and holidays, clothing, and food. To me, all that stuff I put in the "spilled milk" category. They are things that take away religious purpose. Who cares about which prophet is most favored by the man upstairs? Who cares whether or not cows are sacred or whether eating dolphins is immoral? Just don't kill people. Seems simple enough to me. Of course my beliefs are a bit more elaborate than this brief explanation. I'll elaborate more about it in a later entry. Right now, I am just trying to warm-up a little bit in adding a different take on my blog.

Case in Point 2: Coalition Against the Pseudosciences

My roommates in and I were watching an episode of The Real Housewives of Atlanta a couple weeks back. In the episode, Kim took all the housewives to a palm and tarot reader. With the exception of Kim, of course the other housewives were very skeptical regarding their excursion. The only other person besides Kim who decided to participate as opposed to watching was Kim's friend NeNe. The palm reader made a prediction that in a later episode happened to come true. After watching the later episode, me and my roommates began a discussion about how much of this was manufactured by TV producers since it is a supposed reality show, was all that pseudo crap actually accurate, and if it is accurate how the hell do you explain it?

Of course since I am always an extremist about being open-minded to new modes of thinking, I took the opinion that people should not really care about those questions. The most important question is whether or not if the intentions behind the belief are good or bad? Whatever people believe about the pseudosciences, one thing that I think most people can agree on is that it is a tool with the intent to help people. So once again I ask why knock a good thing? I know some police forces use psychics to help them find people.

I personally do not believe in palmistry and I do not fully trust the validity of tarot cards because as far as I know (and I could be wrong) it is all 100% based on spiritualism. There is no concrete science behind it. It is one of those things that I really have to see for myself in order to believe. However, I am very heavy into astrology. Astrology is a lot more scientific and technical than most people realize. It is a lot deeper than just the generalizations in the horoscopes found in the Cosmopolitan Magazine. I find that people have storng opinions on things that they know nothing about...and astrology happens to be one of them. I also do believe that some people in this world are psychics and it is not manufactured. I reconcile it by saying that they are people who have strong intuition.


Case in Point 3: Gay Haters

I decided to mention this given the recent unbanning and then rebanning of gay marriages in California. I must say that I am a strong advocate against girly men...regardless if they are gay or straight. So if you are a macho gay guy, then you are alright with me and if you are a girly straight man, I'm going to have an issue. I just like boys who are boys. What anybody does in the bed room is not my business. However, I must say that I do believe same sex relations is to me morally wrong. But so is a lot of other things that people do...including myself. There is not one perfect person in this world. To all those religious fanatics out there who want to protect the "traditional definition of marriage", I want you to ask yourself one question: Were you free from sin when you got married? The answer for everyone is NO. The ban on gay marriage is 100% discriminatory. It is discriminatory because the values behind the ban are inconsistant with the values toward laws for other people. For instance, there is no ban against serial killers getting married. There is no ban against fornicators from getting married. To have a indiscriminate ban against gay marriage means you must have bans on everyone in the world who is imperfect. It's not possible.

Futhermore, marriage is a celebration of love between two people. So again I ask: why knock a good thing?

Happy 1st Birthday Shaun!!!!

Delaying the Real World

I am not sure if I mentioned this in an earlier entry or not but since it holds relevance to my life for the time being, I think it will be appropriate for me to highlight it once again.

Last winter, after I returned to school after breaking for a year, an old collegue of mine hit me up to say hi because she was in town to do recruiting for UBS from our school. When we met up for dinner, she had mentioned to me that she was very unhappy working at UBS even though she had a more than decent paycheck. She discussed with me just how unfulfilled she had become especially after working her ass off in school (homegirl graduated with a 4.0 from a top 25 school...go head gangster! lol). She was so unfulfilled that she was wavering between whether or not she should make a drastic career change or stay where she was.

Anyone who knows me should know that I am a strong advocate for "doing you" and pursuing the peace and happiness and whatever that means to you. So I told her that if she was not happy then she should save up some money, quit her job, and dive right into whatever her heart desires as long as it did not impede on anyone else.

Around that time, I also accidently ran across this book called Delaying the Real World by Colleen Kinder. It is a real life account of the author's, a Yale graduate, life after graduating. As the description from the book website states:

"Congratulations—you’ve finished school. But if you’re not sure you’re ready to settle down into an office environment, Delaying the Real World is chock-full of creative ideas and practical information that will help you craft your own life-changing adventure:

In this one-of-a-kind guide, Colleen Kinder scouts out experiences that will not only satisfy your free spirit but also pay the bills, make the world a better place, and maybe even catapult you into a future career.

Including stories from young adventurers and detailed information on making these dreams a reality, Delaying the Real World is a road map for the new graduate, inspiring and directing you toward making your twenties the most rewarding (and adventurous) decade of your life."

I ended up buying the book off of Amazon and sending to my friend as a gift. She told me that the book was very useful. Shortly thereafter, she quit her big paying Fortune 500 job, moved to New York City, and began doing teaching research since she always had an interest in counseling (I think that is what she said she was doing now). I have posted the link to the website below:

Delaying the Real World Website

Sooooo, how is this relevant to my current situation? Well I am finally about to graduate from school. I have definitely overstayed my welcome and now it is time for me to start making some decisions. Unfortunately, after interning at Harrah's in Vegas for the summer, I realized that I want to steer my career down another course.

As I think I mentioned in other entries, even though I did very very well at Harrah's and even though I would have good pay and benefits, I quickly learned that being a well oiled piece to the corporate robot is just not for me. It is very unfulfilling and there is definitely more to life.

With that said, I have been working with my career advisor to help me find some direction. I definitely have a plan of action. However, I am generally a very unsettled person and am not quite ready to settle into the 9-5 routine. I definitely not a shirker of responsibility. If that was the case, I would not be about to graduate from Carnegie Mellon. The reason for me being so driven is so that I can afford the life of being free-spirited and adventurous. The reality of it is, that even if I have a big paycheck...I would then be fighting against time. If I want to create the life that I ideally want for myself, I am going to have to take some risks and get off the straight and narrow.

I am currently making plans to go to Ghana for the summer. I initially was going to go to Italy since I am currently learning Italian but, I think a summer trip to Ghana may prove more rewarding. An old aquaintance of mine had went to Ghana and said that he had a really, really good time. He highly reccommended the trip. I still may go to Italy for the summer. It all depends on money. More than likely, Ghana will be a cheaper trip but there is more funding available for Italy. We shall see.

But I have decided that I will delay the real world and live the free-spirited and adventurous life that I have always dreamnt about. There are alot of opportunities out there to travel and see new things and I plan to take advantage of as many as I can.

One of the problems that I face is the personal doubt that I have of myself. But it is so miniscul that it does not really matter. The second problem is that sometimes I waver between satisfying my outward desires versus my inner needs. By delaying the real world in Courtney's way, I may run the risk of giving up personal relationships. Even though there is no doubt that I will inevitably meet new people, I would be living a life surrounded by acquaintances. It would be nice to have a partner in crime. By that, I do not neccessarily mean a significant other. If I do decide to dive right in and really do what I am passionate about (which is traveling), maybe I'll meet my partner in crime on one of my trips.

Well this is the plan for now....but you know me, sudden changes can occur with the drop of a hat.

Ghana in No Reservations