After the Bridge Was Crossed

iUniverse, Inc.

Contents

About the Author...........................................................viiAcknowledgments............................................................ixIntroduction...............................................................xi1. The Art of Thinking (It's Your Choice).................................12. My Interpretation of Love...............................................113. Education...............................................................164. Minorities and Economic Endeavors.......................................225. My Military Experience..................................................306. The Penal System........................................................437. Abortion (Is it right or wrong?).......................................558. Excel in life (Maximizing you 24hr day)................................649. Our Community (It still takes a village)...............................7310. Hip-Hop (The positive and negative aspects of it).....................85Words From The Author......................................................97"If We Must Die" (By Claude McKay)........................................99

Chapter One

When a man and a woman mate and semen is ejaculated into her body, millions and millions of sperm reproductive cells race at a frantic pace toward the female ovaries. Life and death are literally on the line; before you were in your nineties, on your deathbed, surrounded by three generations of love that you helped to create, way before that point in life where you thought, its either now or never. Way before you had the opportunity to risk life and limb within the military services, long before you had the chance to succeed or fail at anything. Way before the trials and tribulations of life had a chance to run their courses, you were engaged in the most critical battle of them all, the battle to be produced or not.

Maybe today, you feel like you're battling the aforementioned problems of the world, hard pressed for success, like the mountain is too high to climb, like the hole is too deep to climb out of; like success is virtually impossible. My, my, my ... how quick the mind forgets what it never knew ... or should I say ... never took the time to think about. To the individual whose reading this book now; you're stronger, greater and more determined than you ever knew. You're a survivor in the truest sense of the word. I mean, just think about it, out of a million cells, yours was the only one to make it through the reproductive system. Thus confirming my theory, and making the old proverb true that, "you are one in a million," capable of achieving anything in life. All you have to do is want it as bad as you wanted life; o' so long ago.

The last paragraph represents a spontaneous thought that had just occurred to me, and well, you know they say that the thought is the cause of it all. The words produced by thought have the power to create, save and destroy. Name something in the world that didn't start with a thought. The house that you live in was someone's thought. The car you drive was someone's vision. The clothes you wear, the chair that you have unconscious faith in when you go to sit in it, are all things that started with a thought.

So I ask you, what's your thought? When are you going to remember the potential you possess and bring your thoughts to fruition, manifestation? When are you finally going to have as much faith in yourself as you have in that chair that you're sitting in? You're so sure that it will sustain your weight, that it will support you. But if you ever decided to muster up that same strength, greatness and determination, and applied it to a passion of yours, I guarantee you that you'll be successful. There's no doubt in my mind that you will capture anything that you decide to pursue.

The art of thinking is complex, yet simplistic. See it's like lifting weights; bench pressing to be exact.

1. You have to have a thought; an ambitious drive.

2. You must get mentally prepared and focus on the goal at hand.

3. Prepare yourself for the expected, as well as, the unexpected pitfalls.

4. Make sure that your spotter is ready to assist you just in case you experience it difficult to get the weight off of you.

5. Secure the clamps, then execute.

The thought was to lift the weight on the bar up and down (10x for instance.) Then, the mental preparation was controlling your breathing and getting your mind ready.

Secure the thought in place then, no matter what, as long as your spotter can support you, don't stop until you reach your goal of 10 repetitions. Even though you had nothing left on rep seven, you dug deep down inside and hit that switch, the switch that all the great ones seem to be able to hit almost automatically. The switch that Ali hit against Foreman, the switch Air Jordan use to hit in the clutch, the switch that a mother hits when she feels as though her child is in danger. You have to hit that switch that allows you to see yourself turning a difficult 8,9,10 into an easy 1,2,3. The art of thinking has the power to do that, and the game of life is played within a 7' perimeter; and that just happens to be where thoughts are born and developed ... inside your head. So the point at hand is, that, the man that believes he can and the man that believes he can't are both right ... the question is ... which person are YOU??

Be aware of the chameleon though, because he possesses the capabilities to forge the appearance of a great thinker, of great thought; but that is not the case. See, the wisdom that's spawned by critical thinking can only be measured and critiqued by who, what, when, where, and how that wisdom is applied and not by your abilities to retain and memorize information, because a parrot can do the same. A chameleon has the shrewdness to interchange his characters when needed. He blends in, and utilizes his handle on the English language to mislead, deceive, and within his mind, in some way lift himself above others.

Don't get me wrong though, because you should never have to dumb down your intellect, and it would be a beautiful thing if his intelligent wordplay was given with the purpose of helping the other man grow, sparking a motivating fuse, or improving his brother man's expansion of thought. More often than not though, it's done merely to display their cynical mirage of superiority. To pat them on the back as if they had once and for all proved and convinced themselves that they now have ascended to an elite coterie of individuals.

You can trust ME when I tell you that every word in this book is used to uplift and expand your thought. Professing great wisdom in this or that, sure they might be highly versed in the rhetoric, they may own the doctor's uniform and they may spend hours upon hours discussing medicinal matters. But when it is actually time to perform heart-to-heart surgery and save another's life, it is here that they remain speechless and motionless. He knew everything in the world but his own ignorance, while the man whom he recited the big words to is on hand, at that very moment, performing the critical transplant.

It was here that we found out that the parrot was not a thinker. It was here that the chameleon was uncloaked and exposed for who he really is, a fraud. But think about how much more useful he would've been to himself and to others if he only...