Jarome Matthew’s Blog

Many who know me know I have no problem taking risks, and strongly stating my opinions and beliefs. In fact, right now i’m taking one of the biggest risks I ever have with a new venture that I’ll be blogging about in detail soon…

That’s mainly because I feel that if you have to live on this insane, corrupt, self obsessed planet, you have to make the most out of it, and live it to it’s fullest. Not because this is ‘it’, far from it! This life is just to get us warmed up and prepared for the worlds beyond. I take risks because as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr said, if you live life in fear, your not really living at all, your already dead:

“I say to you, this morning, that if you have never found something so dear and precious to you that you will die for it, then you aren’t fit to live.
You may be 38 years old, as I happen to be, and one day, some great opportunity stands before you and calls upon you to stand for some great principle, some great issue, some great cause. And you refuse to do it because you are afraid.
You refuse to do it because you want to live longer. You’re afraid that you will lose your job, or you are afraid that you will be criticized or that you will lose your popularity, or you’re afraid that somebody will stab or shoot or bomb your house. So you refuse to take a stand.
Well, you may go on and live until you are ninety, but you are just as dead at 38 as you would be at ninety.
And the cessation of breathing in your life is but the belated announcement of an earlier death of the spirit.
You died when you refused to stand up for right.
You died when you refused to stand up for truth.
You died when you refused to stand up for justice.”

-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
From the sermon “But, If Not” delivered at Ebenezer Baptist Church on November 5, 1967.

This is a more personal post, something I shy away from on this blog. I had to create a new category for it. Will be interesting to see if it becomes published material…

Over the years, as I have explored new ideas and learned hard lessons, it is painfully evident that I am becoming someone I’m not, very different from who I feel I used to be, who I really am. It’s something I’m really wrestling with amongst many other challenges in my life. But what defines who we really are? We’re constantly bombarded with people encouraging us to ‘be who we are’ and ‘be true to yourself’, ‘don’t take crap from anyone’, but I think that these ideas can be a hindrance to personal progress and development.

But I’m still very torn about this idea. I know the changes I’ve made in my life and regarding who I am have made a huge difference in my relationships with others, and my work and goals. It’s a very positive thing. But humans find change very difficult, and I’m no exception. The hardest part about this process is that I feel I am losing many of the things I have always felt defined me as a person, my brutal honesty and affinity with reality, my anti establishment, counter culture, non conformist rebelliousness, and my taste in many things that are unpopular to say the least, especially music. These are traits that are slowly diminishing as a result of my becoming an upstanding, exemplary individual.

But when those things hurt others who are sensitive deeply, and destroy precious relationships, and hold you back from realising your true potential, that’s where I feel motivated to ‘be who I am truly meant to be’, the person I hope I am becoming.

There’s a great rock song by Linkin Park ‘What I’ve Done’ that I posted about here on this subject.
I love the line in those lyrics, ” I’ll face myself, To cross out what I’ve become, Erase myself, And let go of what I’ve done”

Who knows if who we think we are is really who we were meant to be? We are total victims of our environment and upbringing, totally influenced by the world, as my favorite quote reveals. Does the end result really represent our true selves? I have come to the realisation that in the transformation that has been happening over the last 10 years or so, and will continue for another 10 or more, that in order to live to my full potential, and be who I am meant to be, I have had to unlearn many things from my past, in order to accept new ideas and be who I truly am, the person I am meant to be.

It seems in order to do that, I’m just going to have to somehow become detached from the things I ‘was’.

Check back with me in 10 years and I’ll let you know how it’s going.