Duly Noted: If I Could Give You the World...

Today had been pretty nice, and after a conference call the whole day turned around. Not a 180 into not-so-great journey from sunrise to dusk, but moreso into an afternoon of intense internal reflection and self-evaluation.

I've been working with a friend on an initiative and it's been an exciting and worthwhile cause from the start. While embargo prohibits me from detailing the particulars (*rolls eyes at self*), we have been collaborating on an idea we had to empower and uplift our community.

After working together for a number of months, it's become clear that our goals, while undoubtedly complimentary, are not as symbiotic as they seemed in the onset. As the different objectives have become more clear, I've found myself asking if my cause was important enough to stand alone.

To give you a little context, we are working on LGBT advocacy and empowerment ideas, he would like to focus on specifically the black gay experience, and my focus is more on the broader gay experience. In deciding to work on my own path, and supporting/encouraging him to work on his own, a lot of feelings began to resurface from when I was a kid.

When I was a younger man, equally handsome and cool as the other side of a fresh pillow, I lived in Northern California, went to a very culturally diverse school, and have often been the 'black guy' in many different settings. I started to find that many of my black friends, and also many of my non-black friends would jokingly offer that I wasn't 'really' black, that I was 'just, ya know - Jarrett.' At the time, I didn't see this as problematic or emblematic of a much larger problem that would arise for me not too much later.

I have always seen myself as, tried my best to be a positive representation of, and pretty effectively been, a black man. As I got older and started to become a little more aware of people's perception of me, I started to question what it meant for me to 'be black enough.' I attended an HBCU for a year and was immersed in various manifestations of black culture and started to recognize, even more than before, that my choices, preferences and disposition in life didn't make me any more or less black. I was just as black as the black men and women telling me I was trying to 'act white.' To them because I spoke differently than they did, desired different things than they did, and made different decisions than they did, I was, less than.

I'd learned that I was just not the same. Different, but not less than.

In hindsight, I've realized a lot of this internal argument and debate was really rooted in my younger self's desire to be liked, by any and everyone. I say all that to say: this experience has helped me to see how I've grown. I hear my dad checking me a few years back when someone didn't like me and I was distraught about it. "Jarrett, people didn't like Jesus, and He was perfect, so what makes you so special!?" Damn. I get it.

Going forward, I'm excited to embrace the projects that mean the most to me, regardless of what any people will say in my favor, or to the contrary.

I hear Jill Scott in my head:

If I could give you the world
On a silver platter
Would even matter
You'd still be mad at me

...

You cannot hate on me 'cause my mind is free
Feel my destiny, so shall it be
You cannot hate on me 'cause my mind is free
Feel my destiny, so shall it be

Hate on me, hater, now or later
'Cause I'm gonna do me, you'll be made, baby
Go 'head and hate on me, hater, I'm not afraid of
What I got I paid for, you can hate on me