What's REAL?

What’s REAL? By Tim Jacobs

Real –

1. Being or occurring in fact or actuality.

1b. True and actual

2. Genuine and authentic

That is the American Heritage dictionary’s definition of “real”. But the “real” I want to juxtapose is the “real” used in the street’s vernacular. This “real” is what makes you stick out your chest more, walk with a harder swagger and measure yourself. But this “real” tends to be the polar opposite of what “real” is in society. In the parallel universe, the society outside of society known as the streets, this “real” comes by adhering to the preset images, values, reactions and ideologies of times way past. Never to come back, but ironically, ones that seem to be everlasting like a mental cancer that gets handed down generation after generation to everyone that even remotely seems attracted to it.

To earn this privilege to call yourself “real” you have to tread the muddy waters. You have be fully engaged. You have to put it all on the line in an all or nothing fashion, daily. Some do it as willing conscious participant; some as willing unconscious participants. To be “real” , you have to conduct yourself accordingly and handle your business when the call of duty arises. Anything less jeopardizes your image and projects the titles of “Scared”, Weenie” “weak” or anything that puts you on the scale of less than. To be “real” and to avoid being tagged anything outside of that, emotions and gut-feelings have to be suppressed and made to fall in line with what would be perceived by the majority as “Gangsta” “Wit it” Down” or whatever terminology that “real” is synonymous with. The issue now a day’s facing most young men and women is that this image of “real” is bombarding them in their neighborhoods by way of their peers; some by their fathers and mothers who are still living out life through the misunderstandings and through the music they not only listen to but now watch in digital format that either glamorizes a fantasy world or a world that’s designed to drown them.

“real” in the streets means taking no shit. “real” means acting first and according to a script that means embracing the perpetual brutality of their fellow man or woman which is outside the lines of society and a formula to a problem that solves nothing. One would have to raise his hand in a classroom setting and ask the teacher “How on God’s green earth did you up with that answer because it makes no reasonable sense to a mature mind. Outside of childish understanding of “He hurt me, I hurt him”, there is not a cent of sense to pull out of that formula! So we shall shift focus onto who are the teachers of this script that I speak of? Who are they you ask? They are what are referred to as “O’s” in the street; O.G.’s, G’s etc. They are the older, more dominating fixtures that the schools can’t control. They are the ones that the State hasn’t locked away for life yet. The ones who have made a path of their own through their disobedience and willingness to take risks that increase their personal gain. These are instructors to the children who lack strong family ties. If the father role lacks glamour, chances are that glamour will be found in what comes off as a secondary father. One who gives validation to the young man’s corrupt and distorted way of living. One who fills his cup in the sense of praise of backward ways of living.

These backward ways are nothing to do with the mundane routine of book learning. Rather they endorse instant gratification, fast, high risk ways of making a living such as ways of doubling up, flipping work (selling cocaine & other narcotics), means to use a pistol as a ATM and tactics to use the opposite sex as a pure means of monetary and sexual gain. Ways which have no solid ground of longevity under them. Ways that have paths to six feet in bug meat or sixty years in a penitentiary. Short term gains that tend to balance out by the way of long term losses. As one who has spent 11 of his 31 waking years of living in penitentiary after penitentiary, I can honestly say a Gangsta is only as good as the day is cause when the day fades away, so do the cares and concerns of those around them.

Friendships in the penitentiary and streets are both only means to an end. Just like high school, I want to be seen with you because your rep of real-ism helps validate me. When you leave, so do the thoughts and concerns of you. O.G.’s that have passed away too soon turn into sad shakes of the head and tattoo’s that represent a repeated scenario of demise, but the O.G.’s that took path #2 and got 30 in on a 60, got nothing but a TV & their state issues. They survive on the state trays and whatever their younger homies who still have a mother or a woman on the outside kick down to them.

These O.G.s, these so called “real” ones, traded in their mothers’ and fathers’, their freedom, basically their lives, for a image they have of themselves to be protected in the next man’s eyes as “that guy”. It’s an all too recurring sad story because when they set out, they have no ties but to the ones that are literally moth’s attracted to their own ignorant flame. Their whole lives lived in a fashion to claim a reputation that means nothing other strikes on their record to the men that are in charge; the one that does the hiring and firing.

So I ask who’s real and who’s fake – the man that works 13 hour days to just keep his family straight and phones 911 when he sees his neighbor’s door getting kicked in or the man that left his family miles away while he’s in the penitentiary? In society, being “real” is being there when you’re needed - physically, mentally and emotionally. Being “real” is having your bills paid on time and being able to handle responsibilities that have been chosen or been mitigated to you so that you can receive the blessings of freedom.

Being “real” is actively choosing right from wrong in the sense you know who will be affected in the totality of your decision making. We are born with an innate sense of what’s right and what’s wrong. That should be clear by the time we’re allowed to stand on our own. By distorted teachers, these ways to earn stripes by getting strikes on your record turn to stars and bars to young men who have bought into the deceptive idea that is what merits being a “real” man.

So now let’s take a look at what is “fake” as defined as:

1. One that is not authentic or genuine

2. To contrive and present as genuine; counterfeit

So let’s now make the contrast between being a “real” man to your loved ones and playing a “real” man to the streets. Would a “real” man risk leaving his family to fend for themselves for years at a time? Would a “real” man run out on his kids? So who are you “real” to? “Real” to the streets and fake to those that love you? The street never reciprocated real love. All it has ever does is weave a web of lies and ate the heads of the prey its caught; leaving a trail of victims in its wake that could and should have been proud parents seeing their child advance in life. They should be receiving degrees, not space-age sentences; taking part in life and leaving their mark on history rather than taking life and having others wish they never existed.

I challenge all men that deem themselves active and in the streets to really answer these questions internally and start making the right steps to be “real” to what’s “real” in life; what really matters. Live your life in the light of truth. Step out of the shadows of the lies.