I’ve always been someone who’s defined himself first through his spirituality.  To some people, this seems obvious, but I bring it up for two reasons.  First, for most of my youth, that was a subconscious choice.  It’s something I’m becoming more aware of now as I settle into my ways, my likes, my life.  The second reason I bring this up, is because for all of us, whatever you believe in, your ‘beliefs’ are not necessarily something you literally wear on your sleeve, unless you’re a priest or a nun.  What you are, who you are and who you choose to be, who you choose to share your life with and why you choose those people are all things that make up the ongoing process we call life.  A friend of mine has a fairly good analogy: the teenage years you spend trying to figure out who you are, the 20s you spend trying to find your place in the world, the 30s are when you try to make the most out of the place you’ve carved out for yourself, and everything after that is when you really try to enjoy the life you’ve built.  I think there’s some leeway in there, but that’s not too far off. 

A couple days ago, some tickets I ordered came through the mail.  Tickets to go see an Italian opera, at the Met in New York City.  A couple days before that I got an invitation to a GQ event being held here in Los Angeles, another night out that I’m looking forward to in the near future.  I joked with my ace that 09 would be the year I officially turn in my ‘Wyandotte Pass,’ but in reality I turned that card in a couple years ago.  Let me explain…

A couple years back, the NBA All Star Game was in Vegas, which at the time was still my favorite playground other than Los Angeles.  If you could make up a dream trip for the ‘Three Musketeers’, an All-Star Weekend in Vegas was pretty high up for us, the way I’m sure it was a blast for everyone who ended up going.  So was I there?  Nope.  While the Slam Dunk contest was going on, I was out with one of my closer female friends.  We went and caught an arthouse movie, had a nice meal, and called it a night.  And even as I was living the moment, I knew how I was in the exact right place doing exactly what my karma wanted me to do.

There’s a scene in the movie I’m writing right now where the teenage version of me calls the adult version of me a sellout for what I’ve become.  Is he right?  Yes, I don’t get on this or any other soapbox to complain about all the world’s problems like I used to.  It doesn’t mean I don’t have an opinion anymore, normally it just means my opinion has already been expressed by someone else in some other outlet.  I still have no problem throwing out my two cents if I don’t feel someone has accurately expressed how I feel.  But I don’t think anyone who interacts with me these days would categorize me as ‘angry’; I heard that alot in my younger days, even though some of you may find that hard to believe.

But the hard to believe part ties into why the real answer to the sellout question is No.  I would argue that I was selling myself out more in my militant days.  Not politically mind you, but personally.  A lot of that you chalk up to being a kid and still having that need to fit in, but I’m not a kid anymore by anyone’s definition.  The root of the sellout question is really the issue of labeling yourself and others.  You’re either this or you’re that; there’s no in between.  But in the real world, everybody is usually in between.  And while there are always people representing one extreme or the other, to borrow a line from John Mayer, “I know the heart of life is good.”

And yeah you read that right, I have John Mayer songs I can listen to as much as I listen to Jay-Z.   Most of my friends are straight, but definitely not all.  GQ is sitting on my coffee table, not Ebony.  I was lovesick over a certain young mainstream starlet for years (she’s happily married now), but that doesn’t mean I’m one of those brothers, who if Beyonce walked in the room, I’d be saying “She ain’t tight!”  (You might laugh, but I know Hollywood brothers like that.  That might be a good blog for another time, Lord knows I have the material.)

To tie it back in to my original statement, being an African-American is very important to me.  But it really is not the most important thing to me; my relationship with God is.  My purpose, what I feel I’m here to do, is still tied very directly into the color of my skin.  But there are a lot of aspects to my life where ‘black’ is just the label I start with when I walk into the room.  At this stage of the game, if smiling in pictures and going to Hall and Oates concerts and enjoying certain movies means we have nothing in common?  Well, maybe it means we don’t really have anything in common.  That’s life.