She Will Not Lose: The Indigo Trip

How often do you say thank you or acknowledge another person with hello or smile? What is your first response when someone sneezes next to you in public? How many times have you walked into a room full of people and greeted them only to get blank stares?  When is it ok to be courteous to someone?  These are just a few self-reflection questions that I have had to ask myself about and what I thought my readers should consider. Everyone is into being social through media but not through physical contact. I am just as guilty for my social habits. I have passed by friends and not even realizing it because I was so involved in my phone.  Additionally, it seems like everyone feels entitled nowadays. It's as if you have to earn the right to be spoken to; if I do not know you then why should I ask how you are doing. I doubt that any of us were raised with these customs, so how did common courtesy disintergrate? I was born and raised in the South and southern hosp...

I have always felt strongly on the topics of social equality. My parents taught me to be open-minded. I went to a very unique elementary school. It was located next to Maxwell Airforce Base, one of the largest Air Force bases in the south, and service members from all over the world would enroll their children into the school. I made friends from places like Russia, Portugal, Costa Rica, South Africa, etc. and it taught me how to interact with these children without bias. We were all transparent to physical and cultural differences because all we were to each other were classmates and friends. As an adult, I appreciate that experience even more as I see such a large cultural divide in the most multicultural country in the world. Discrimination has been nothing new in my lifetime; everyone that I know has been discriminated against in some sort of way. Unfortunately, I have experienced class, racial, as well as, gender discrimination for most of my life. The media's platfor...

Life is challenging but we are not put here to live in struggle. Struggle is nothing more than life lessons. There is absolutely nothing wrong with failure, we can't always come on top. When a person makes a mistake, experience teaches us. Perfection does not exist in man. There is no good in holding disappointment within yourself because everyone messes up. We are accountable for our life choices and the actions that we take, however, we can not harbor our mistakes. Consequences can be harsh but with forgiveness we have a gateway to a fresh start. For example, it is hard to live up to certain people's expectations. I have disappointed quite a few people because of the choices that I made. Self-condemnation was one of the heaviest crosses that I grew up having to bare. I could not bring myself to asking for forgiveness, nor practicing how to forgive myself. I realized that withholding my mistakes, left me stagnant. I was stuck in denial and I made it more difficult ...

Group thinking  can drive the way society work and communicate with one another. In my lifetime I have witnessed negative group thinking that has established bias and hateful ideas about different cultures, religions, and even regions.  
 To avoid Groupthink, it is important to have a process in place for checking the fundamental assumptions behind important decisions, for validating the decision-making process, and for evaluating the risks involved. ( http://communicationtheory.org/groupthink/) We were not born to hate or to form malice against one another.  
For instance, if  you had a roommate who expressed bias opinions on the Muslim faith and their culture that does not mean you have to reflect the same behavior. You may know more and understand more. With you being more aware of Muslim customs, it is beneficial to educate your roommate instead of allowing them to continue being wrong. When people are misinformed, it makes the suggestion of trust a...

Colors have such a strong significance in our lives.  In fact, color affects our interpretation of what we see and further, how closely tied they are to our emotions . We have the ability to see the world's vibrancy but we also have colorful intuition that can either hold us back or welcome us. It is our choice to decide how to react to how we see colors. We are all shaded and colored beautifully, from our skin, to our eyes, to the nail polish ladies pick out at the nail salon.  When you sit and think about color, it is amazing how it drives our society. During the pivotal periods in our history that breathed life into the injustices behind Jim Crowe in the South, the Holocaust in Europe, and the Atlantic Slave Trade, color has controlled the framework of communities. Case in point, one of the most powerful countries in the world shows division based on an individual’s understanding of color. Moreover, territories  have been set   in cities and neighborhoods...