The reality is I understand all too well and there's no need to put extra syrup and sugar on the matter.
Innocent or guilty, it's all about choices. It doesn't matter if your parents are doctors or lawyers, sanitation workers or grocery store clerks. They may try to point you in the right direction, but in the end it's all up to you.
Looking at the photos of five teenagers, I don't see street-savvy youth, I see frightened children, even the one scowling at the camera, trying to look hard, I see a mere boy pouting because his life is about to get real hard real quick.
Don't think I haven't noticed the hash tags with Free the Fam, stupid as they are, people with a gang mindset who think these youth who are about to face hard changes and a brutal stay in lock-up are somehow folk heroes or street heroes for what they allegedly did.
Yes, I know about innocent until proven guilty, firmly believe in it, but you don't get mixed up in cold-blooded charges of murder by studying algebra and English, by working yourself until the point of exhaustion on the football field or track after school. You get in these situations by choosing who your friends, if you can call them that, are.
Looking at the photos of five teenagers, I wondered what this so-called life is really about, is it really about thinking you can get all the good things free of charge without eventually having to face the consequences?
Is it really about killing a 2-year-old child to exact revenge for idiotic street beef which probably amounts to nothing in the real world where intelligent people solve their differences by sheer logic and diplomacy instead of the brute force of a gun?
Herrick, in To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time, wrote, gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
While the 17th Century poem may be stodgy compared to gangster rap, it speaks volumes of living life to the fullest at tender ages when every thing is before you.
It ends by saying, “Then not be coy, but use your time and while ye may, go marry, for having lost but once your prime you may for ever tarry.”
This, to me, speaks on several levels, saying you can live life to the fullest while you can. It says nothing of allegedly gunning people down, of draining the life out of someone for money or drugs or whatever the motive may be.
Looking at the photos of five teenagers, looking back to two horrific days in Weldon in August, no one can tell me what happened then and last week in Roanoke Rapids changed anyone's lives for the better, solved the problems between the parties or made anyone richer.
The only thing it's done is caused people to needlessly grieve. It's done nothing to ease the petty disagreements. It's only complicated matters, entangled people into the legal system and increased the tension and rage among those involved. It sure hasn't alleviated fears among the law-abiding citizens that this ridiculous beef could somehow affect their lives.
When Thoreau went into the woods he did so to suck the marrow out of life, to take with him some deeper understanding of himself, not to destroy life.
There's a lot to be said for living your life where you don't have to seek the approval of others, where your goal is to find some richer meaning in your own life and not succumb to the whims of others who are only out to use you.
Looking at the photos of five teenagers, I only see wasted opportunities, abysmal decisions and lives that could have been free from that with sound choices. Yes, they are innocent until proven guilty, but that they are in the mess they are in right now tells me they only made poor decisions.
As Herrick wrote, when youth and blood are warmer, but being spent, the worse and worst, times still succeed the former — Lance Martin
