We often run away from home in search of a better life. I know I did. I thought the pain and suffering I experienced as a child was because of all the terrible decisions the people around me made. I now know how the media crafts false negative narratives around poor and minority communities, while creating equally unrealistic, flattering images of wealthy, white communities where everyone is happy, loving, and pure. I’ve seen both worlds, and I’m well aware that we as humans are deeply flawed no matter how much money is in our pockets. Still, poverty does something to people. When you have no certainty about your basic human needs, you enter a constant state of fear and stress. I saw that with everyone in my family, and we all had the same response: shut off your emotions. When you’re swimming in hurt, it’s better to feel nothing at all, so we train ourselves to expect nothing from anyone. We tell ourselves that nothing matters, and no one cares. We teach children at an early age to toughen up, look out for yourself, and trust no one. On the outside, we’d only project coldness and anger, never fear, sadness, and empathy. We did our crying on the inside. I needed to leave that environment to be able to grasp what’s been happening to those of us unfortunate enough to grow up poor, generation after generation. I needed to heal before I could look upon those I saw as being my tormentors with compassion and love.
As I toured the country preaching about the Seed Money Act, explaining the importance of the unconditionality of the grants, I felt the second major revelation of my life. I thought about my family and all the people I’d decided weren’t worth being around anymore. After a number of painful experiences, I told myself those people didn’t deserve my love. Yet, there I was, trying to argue with the rest of the world that every single person, regardless of what they may have done in the past, deserves another chance. I didn’t like that cognitive dissonance. How could everyone be deserving of the basic human needs of food, clothing, shelter, and transportation, but not be deserving of love? I sat, angry and confused. There were certain people I was just never going to forgive. My mother and I worked through a lot of our issues years ago, and I’m grateful for it. Building a loving relationship with her has been essential for both of our healing. But my father, I told myself I’d never forgive him for being the reason we grew up poor. My parents have suffered through things I can’t fathom. And when I go back to their parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, the hurt of even thinking about it is too much to bear. As children, we don’t see our parents as what they are: a reflection of the world they were brought into. When I took the time as an adult to learn about my mother and see the world through her eyes, it hurt to think of how I wanted nothing more than to run away from the home she built for us and never come back. I blamed her for how hard things were, without asking how she got into that situation in the first place. The fact that she forgave me for my childish lack of understanding and ungratefulness is, to this day, my definition of love. I know the hurt that I’ve caused her, and she’s always forgiven me without a second thought. While on the tour I sat in my hotel room thinking about my family, my father in particular. “How many times should I forgive people?” I asked aloud. I didn’t hear anything. I’m not sure what I expected. I laughed to myself, then thought back
CHAPTER 10: NOW THAT I’M OLDER, ALL CHILDISH THINGS END | 121 to those WWJD bracelets from the 90s. What Would Jesus Do? I’d read the Bible several times, along with numerous other religious texts. I never vibed with religion, but there was something special about the teachings of Jesus that resonated with me. Treat each other with love, care for the poor, trust your ability to connect with the divine. I reached over into the nightstand and grabbed my Bible. I flipped to the New Testament and found where Peter asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” “I tell you, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy-seven times.”7 Effectively, there’s no limit to how many times we should forgive one another. I thought about that love from my mother and tried to apply it to my father. My mother gave her entire life to children who never truly appreciated what she had to endure to be able to give us what little we could have. We complained about what we didn’t have and about the affection she didn’t give—if she could give that kind of love, maybe I could too. I decided to begin the real work of forgiving my father eight, nine, or ten more times if necessary so we could begin to build a relationship with one another. I’ve left him out of this book so we can have a chance to heal our relationship in private. I’ve also left out the details of my relationships with my siblings and other close family members because we must work through these hurts ourselves before sharing them with the outside world. However, I write about them now because it’s essential I share the revelation above, that there’s no such thing as conditional love, and that there’s no limit to how many times we all deserve to be forgiven. I can only hope that the numerous people I’ve hurt throughout my life can find it in their hearts to forgive me as well. What does it mean to never forgive someone? A world without forgiveness implies we hold onto anger and trauma forever. That anger hardens our memories so we never let go of the pain, usually burying it 7 Matthew 18: 21-22
deep in our own bodies and souls. Forgiveness is therefore most important so the hurt person can let the negative energy pass through them without holding onto it any longer. It also then opens the door for us to re-engage with the person on the other side of the conflict, paving the way for them to someday acknowledge their mistakes, apologize, and learn from their past errors. Like with any challenging task, they may need you to allow them several chances to try again before they get it right, but we must provide time and space for relationships to heal if we ever hope to have community, family, and love. Love is the act of giving without any expectation of return. In a society where we measure our own worth by dollar amounts, that’s a difficult concept to grasp. We think in terms of transactions. What will you give me if I give you this? The Seed Money Act and everything I’m doing with my life today is an attempt to turn that on its head and ask, “What can I afford to give you, with no expectation of return?” When it comes to the Seed Money Act, that return will assuredly be trillions of dollars. When it comes to family, I’m not so sure. But I’ve promised myself that I’ll give whatever extra I have to any friends, family, or strangers that need it. In that way, I hope to reconcile my past mistakes of throwing people away with my current clarity around the importance of giving everyone a baseline chance. Hurt people hurt people. Relationships need boundaries and each person must trust their intuition to know when they need to back away from a situation and when they have the strength and courage to show up for a wounded soul (oftentimes, the most dangerous people to come near). We must protect ourselves from the damage other traumatized people can inflict upon us without abandoning those who are most in need of our love. We can step back from a physically and/or emotionally dangerous situation without also choosing to permanently discard that person from our societies, families, or lives. Traumatized people don’t disappear from the world when we toss them aside or put them in cages. That energy will remain until some community accepts the challenge to show them how to love, accept love,
CHAPTER 10: NOW THAT I’M OLDER, ALL CHILDISH THINGS END | 123 and heal. As a child, I didn’t have the strength to love those who hurt me, or who couldn’t reciprocate my love because the pain was too much. As an adult, I’m learning to channel the source of strength that allows me to forgive and love with boundaries but no conditions. I’ve made countless mistakes in life and ignored more suffering than I care to admit. I don’t consider myself to be an especially good person but a deeply flawed human being trying my best to choose good over and over again. We often act like helping others is some saintly achievement. It’s not. We’re social animals, and we’re meant to help one another. It’s in our DNA to find joy in the happiness of others and feel hurt when we see someone in pain. We’re designed to care about one another, but we’re taught to turn our feelings off. We need to open our hearts again and start caring about our fellow humans. I’m not a perfect person, and neither is anyone else. If we let perfection be our standard, we can never bear the pain of acknowledging our own faults and begin the slow process of self-improvement. Progress is striving for perfection, not being born as such. A better world doesn’t start with better policy. It starts with us being better people. Once we all have the basic human necessities covered, then we can spend the time and energy it take to look inwards, fixing our own shortcomings and healing our own traumas. When each of us can show up as a little bit better of an individual, then collectively we’re that much better as a whole. We were all born into a world of plenty, yet we’ve been duped into believing it’s one of scarcity and that we must fight one another to survive. This planet has graciously offered up to all of us more than enough resources to thrive alongside all the other beings on Earth. Poverty is not the result of laziness, ignorance, or bad fortune. Poverty is a result of greed. Once we all see that, the solution to ending poverty becomes simple. It takes an incredible amount of money and energy to keep the resources to yourself. As a wealthy country, we fill ourselves with hate and contempt for the poor, pushing once rare narcissistic tendencies towards
the cultural norm so we can block out the inevitable pain felt while stepping over human beings sleeping on the streets. Our indifference to the suffering of others for the sake of “stuff” is driving us towards self- destruction. As Drake says, we must “learn to love people and use things, and not the other way around.”8 I’m fortunate to be able to wake up each day and follow my heart. I have a passion for improving society, and I get to do just that. I want every single human on the planet to know what it feels like to live with purpose and dignity. No one was born to be a slave. By denying them access to food, clothing, shelter, and transportation, we’re condemning the poor to a life of servitude. The opposite of poverty isn’t wealth. It’s freedom. It’s time to recognize every human’s right to individual choice and freedom. We come up with ways to avoid the topic, but we know it’s wrong. We know it’s immoral. And now is the time to abolish slavery once and for all. “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity. “But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. 8 “Connect,” 2013
CHAPTER 10: NOW THAT I’M OLDER, ALL CHILDISH THINGS END | 125 “In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” “But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.” —MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. It’s time to cash that check. End Poverty. Make Trillions.