#22 May 8, 2021

Dear Mike,

I've shut my door to many relationships in the past few days.  It's a process of determining what is good for you and what is detrimental to you.

It still leaves your life a lonelier place.  Sometimes it leaves me in a place of profound sadness.

I talked to Dontrell Bonner yesterday.  He's a student at Thurgood Marshall High School.   "I'm not a teacher, you know.  I have a degree in business.  I'm not an expert in crowd control.  But you guys would have had different teachers coming in and out of your lives because the school fired the art teacher last year.  I didn't want that for you guys.  I wanted you to learn something, just by working at it, for an entire semester.  If you had bought into what I was trying to accomplish Dontrell you would have improved.  It's in the struggle.  If you can tolerate the discomfort of going somewhere that is uncomfortable then you can get better a little each day.  You apply that to anything that you want to achieve with your life.  The principle holds true.  You can get what you struggle for."

I suppose it was a good day.

Making a difference in the lives of others.  Bringing them to my philosophy.  My philosophy is that I love people indefinitely and unfathomably...to them at their stage in life.  I don't know if it derives from the drive to promote the continuation of the species.  Who am I to rally against my basic programming?  I don't think that is your primary contention with life, Mike.  Your contention is the mother with whom life presented you.

She didn't present reality as it was.

It was a lie.  So then you couldn't trust her.

I'm sorry for that Mike.

Because as much as I rail against my mom, I do trust her.

So we are different ball stadiums yet still engaged in the sport of baseball.

https://youtu.be/jwggrAPfgcE