My IP for Self-Health

My IP for self-health is built around the concept of being able to internally construct, manage, and sustain the external injustices of the world. The majority of people will face external injustices in one form or another. I am no exception.

For example, I was accused of several serious crimes that were committed by another person while I was in a different country on tour. Without any context, my father was contacted by law enforcement with a warrant for my arrest. He was put in the impossible and unimaginable situation of having to call me about an arrest warrant. I had to have the painful conversation of explaining to my father that I was accused of a crime that I didn’t commit. One moment I was free and focused on what I thought was important. The next minute I was in a years-long court battle defending my innocence. If it wasn’t for a very specific and close friend of mine who helped me navigate the situation, I would not be writing this article to you today. This person would never want any credit for what he did to save my life. But it is important for my conscience that it is at least spoken about in a general sense as I cannot accept the full credit for overcoming this particular challenge on my own. With all that I know about health, the internal, and managing external stress, this one particular situation challenged all of those notions for a good 5-year period minimum. I never felt like a victim once throughout this entire process (even though it was very clear that I was). There were some days, however, that it was hard to grasp the reality that I had been positively “identified” as the person who committed these crimes with me standing right in front of the plaintiff — a person who I had never seen in my life. I distinctly remember my immediate thought in the midst of it happening because it was so shocking: other people who look like me or resemble my frame have been sent to prison for life in this exact situation. The experience gave me a whole new perspective, outlook, and respect for those who were imprisoned for most of their life for something they absolutely did not do.

On a separate occasion, I was drug out of the window of a car in the middle of the highway by a police officer and attacked by his canine. On another occasion, I was put on the ground face first and got my tooth knocked out for jaywalking. In another instance, I was in public with glasses on and had a random man decide I was looking at him/being nosy and that he was, therefore, going to fight me. While that situation didn’t ultimately end well for him, it was an unnecessary battle that could’ve ended up differently for me for no other reason than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. One of my homes in Jamaica was broken into so badly that it looked like they used a bulldozer to come in and crush the wall in the room I used to sleep in. They broke into the house to steal from us based on envy. They had been casing me and my family for months.

These are a few examples. The complete list is much more extensive than anyone has time for, including me. The bottom line is that anyone who knows me deeply as well as daily has always said that my light never diminished through any circumstance. If I can quote those in my inner circle who truly know me in combination with not having deep envy for me — of which there are very few — and have seen me go through numerous difficult circumstances where injustice is the key point of contention: my light has “never even flickered”. Despite going through some very hard, emotional times internally, there is not a single day that I have felt sorry for myself or ever felt like a victim in any regard. As both my parents have role modeled daily to this day, there are individuals going through circumstances that would make everything I just listed above laughable, insignificant, and completely irrelevant. This is the mentality that I not only grew up with and saw demonstrated daily by my parents but one I’ve carried on. Carrying this mantle is not merely an act of survival. It is an ability to see my circumstance for what it is…an experience. If this experience is not managed internally, that is the true injustice.