June 12, 2025 • 23 mins
In this episode of Grumpy Wizdom, Talib Jasir steps into the heat—literally and figuratively—to reflect on a life lived for others. From the sweat-soaked platforms of Fulton Street to the internal interrogation sparked by a single voice asking, “Why are we doing this?”, Talib walks us through the moment he began reclaiming his freedom.
He doesn’t just talk belonging—he deconstructs it. What does it mean to belong to yourself in a world that socializes you to serve others first? What happens when we live like we owe our time, talent, and truth to everyone but ourselves?
Through personal narrative, spiritual insight, and hard-earned clarity, Talib challenges us to name the invisible contracts we've signed and invites us to tear them up.
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction and Host Background
00:29 The Daily Grind: Commuting in NYC
01:03 The Struggle for Employment and Education
02:46 The Heat of Fulton Street Platform
04:07 Questioning Life Choices
05:09 Realization of Self-Belonging
07:59 The Journey of Writing 'Spirit of the Movement'
11:14 Living Authentically and Breaking Free
12:56 The Importance of Courage and Self-Liberation
21:03 Conclusion and Call to Action
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Grumpy Wizdom 5 talib-jasir--he-him-_2_06-02-2025_164725: [00:00:00] Ayo!
(00:04):
Welcome back to Grumpy Wizdom.
I'm your host, Talib Jasir, and in case you forgot, I'm the founder of Afros & Audio Podcast Festival.
The first podcast conference for and by Black podcast creators and audio professionals in the world, not just the city, the world.
I wanna talk this talk.
On belonging, and I'm gonna clarify what sense of belonging.
I mean Pretty quickly.
(00:28):
I remember working on 42nd Street, New York.
And I'm in Jersey City, which means I've got to take the path train from Grove Street Station to the World Trade Center.
Get off at World Trade Center, walk to Fulton Street, walk to Fulton Street to get on the fifth or sixth train.
40 to Grand Central and then walk up the street to my job.
And it was cool.
I enjoyed the commute.
(00:52):
It was my first job in the city, and I [00:01:00] had been trying to get a job for mad long.
Oh my God.
I can't tell you how long I was trying to get a job when I moved from North Carolina to New Jersey, talk about risk from the last episode.
I had a job in North Carolina.
Then I come up here and I'm unemployed.
Then I go up there and I'm unemployed for a damn near a year or plus my wife.
(01:16):
had done worked two jobs by the time I get one and I'm, and they calling her, they calling for her for a job when I'm the one sitting at home.
So talk about risk.
Anyway, so I'm glad I'm finally working.
Am I happy that I'm paying $8 to park every day?
Getting on the train and paying for that every day and then rinse and repeat Monday through Friday.
I'm in school also.
(01:40):
This is when I'm back in school, working to finish because America is a society of credentials.
And it seemed like for the Gen X generation, we were the generation that was kept out without a degree.
Our parents were able to get [00:02:00] jobs and they'd still be at their job 20, 40, 50 years, no degree, just longevity, starting in entry level and working their way up and staying in the company until it was retirement time, but not us.
I guess they figured.
This door been open a little too long.
Let's now put on the, you must have this degree in order to work here for some bullshit.
(02:04):
So I figured that I wasn't getting calls for jobs and I wasn't, being picked because I didn't finish school.
I didn't finish copping back in the day.
I didn't finish Coppin State University back in the day.
I left three and a half years in, and so I was back in school at St.
Peter's University in Jersey City, go peacocks and I and I was working on 42nd Street.
And so on this particular day, and let me just stop to give an honorable mention to the heat spirit that I possesses the Fulton Street platform.
(02:28):
Where you [00:03:00] stand for the five and six and the only air, and the only relief you're going to receive is what I call Rat Breeze because it's rats in the tunnel and the wind is pushing their breeze.
Anyway, for anybody who didn't need that, I'm sorry.
But that's the only relief you get is when the train comes by and pushes rat, breathe rat breeze in your face for a minute you are like, oh, sweet relief.
I promise I won't say that word.
Those words anymore combined.
It is hot as hell and I'm talking about when it's cold outside, when it's negative two degrees, it's still hot.
(02:52):
You by the time you walk from the tray, this could just be me 'cause I run hot because by the time I walk from brisk walk, because you were in New York, so stop playing.
Get the fuck out the way.
By the time I walked from Path Station.
Stand at the light, cross the street, walk around the corner, go down the stairs at Fulton.
I'm sweating.
Like I might as well be in New Orleans in mid-August.
(03:16):
.
So I put this, so I had started even wearing my north face in a, in a.
And a [00:04:00] t-shirt underneath my coat with my shirt over my arm.
Like I, that was how hot I was by the time I get to the station.
Anyway, you get the damn point.
So it was one of these days where I was just like, not this again.
(03:40):
Like I, if I have to stand on this platform.
One more 'gin, it is, I asked myself.
You say you don't like this?
Nah, man, I hate this shit.
Okay?
Why are you doing it?
(04:04):
What you mean why I'm doing it?
Because I'm supposed to do this.
Working, I'm doing, I'm supposed to do because I'm supposed to do this.
I should be working.
That's what I'm doing.
Like why you asking me that question?
(04:28):
You, me, I'm you.
You know what the answer is already?
We supposed to do this, we need this.
Do we?
Okay.
What?
(04:52):
What you trying to say?
It seems to me that we've been acting like we belong to somebody else besides ourself.
Break it down.
I don't understand.
Every time we talk about doing other things with our life.
Every time we talk about doing other things with our life, you start talking about what you should do, what you're supposed to do, and what you need to do.
(05:16):
And I'm just wondering where all of that came from because we have yet to ask ourselves what we want to do.
All right.
You got a point, but we [00:05:00] need this.
I haven't worked in, but we need this.
Do you?
Yeah, I do.
(05:40):
But while we're on the subject of belonging, you might be onto something.
Hold on.
Let me think about this.
Yeah.
I've been operating like I belong to others.
I can see that.
(06:04):
I can see where you're going with that.
Every time I wanna go and write, I start thinking about what if this happens while I'm not at the house?
And what if I'm needed?
What if...this is selfish.
You can't, just because you want to go and write it doesn't mean you can.
Can't you?
(06:28):
I'm like, shut up.
I'm, processing this.
That was rhetorical.
Gimme a minute.
Perceptionally the, sometimes we've gotta discern between perception and reality.
And in that moment I was, it was, it had become my reality, but it was still perception because who I thought I belonged to they weren't waking up in the morning and saying, and making sure that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.
(06:52):
Just implied, but they were doing what they thought they were supposed to be doing.
So naturally I complied.
I fell in line.
This is what you do.
[00:06:00] You live America's dream.
You go to the school system and get taught what you're supposed to be taught so that you can act how you're supposed to act.
(07:16):
You go on to the next phase of life, and whether it's a HBCU or a PWI.
You're still being taught colonized education with the occasional disruptors as I had a real big disruptor.
At Coppin State University, rIP to Baba.
Leon Baba, Dr.
Leon Hosey, who changed my life.
I, but for the most part, we're going there for a reason to get credentialed to exist in a society that.
(07:40):
Will still pick and choose according to your presentation.
So I broke it down okay?
You acting like you belong to her and them.
And you're acting accordingly.
Like you moving, like this is what they put on a piece of paper.
Okay, Talib, this is what you're gonna do from this time to this time, [00:07:00] okay?
(08:04):
From this age to this age, this is where you need to be and this is exactly what you're supposed to do.
And then here I, and did anybody ask you if you liked it?
Okay.
Thank you.
And then from here, from this time span, you gonna be walking from World Trade Center to Fulton Street and the sweat on your back is just proof positive that you were on the right track.
Good job.
(08:28):
Nobody had said that.
That was my perception of what they all wanted, but.
If I were to ask them at the time, they probably would've said, whatever you wanna do, but I never asked them.
I just went according to, these plans that were actually non-existent, except in socialization and constructs that must be dismantled.
Have, And our Gen Zs and our gen alphas, they've taken up the torch.
It's coming down, it's coming down.
(08:52):
Give thanks.
But after I had that conversation, that's when I realized that I had been really walking a path as if I didn't have a say.
[00:08:00] My first book, Spirit of the Movement, it's a novel.
I haven't written a novel since, and that is still incomplete, but it's a fictional story about a woman who was born inside of the Black Power Movement and.
Because of the, decisions and choices of her, of the adults in her life.
She becomes a casualty of this war on the Blackness.
(09:16):
And this is this, and it's her story.
Her name is Spirit.
Spirit of the movement.
One day I'll finish it.
I promise you it's a dope story and I'm not just saying that because I wrote it, but I am I guess saying it 'cause I wrote it.
So anyway, I wrote that book when I first moved to North Carolina and finished it, I sent it off to an editor.
(09:40):
She red lined the shit out of it.
Send it back to me.
And as I started to rewrite it, I was beginning to feel disconnected from it.
And that was the first time I realized that I was creating as if I belonged to so to others, like I [00:09:00] was thinking as I was creating what happens if this person reads this and they're gonna wonder where it's fiction?
Who cares?
But.
(10:04):
Again, we are socialized in such a fishbowl experience that we think all eyes are on us because this fear of being assessed and judged and measured by other people, whether they're strangers or family members or friends, paralyzes a lot of us.
And even if it doesn't paralyze us, we move, we do.
We create, we are constantly considering what they quote unquote say.
Whoever they are in your life, we all have 'em.
I've heard people calling them monitoring spirits.
I think, and I think there is that in the world, but I think more than monitoring spirits, it's the energy that comes with, comes from being [00:10:00] monitored.
(10:28):
And all of us hate that shit.
Some of us just don't know it.
So that being my first understanding of what it felt like to create as if I was writing it for specific people's eyes.
And not a world, there's a world open, but I didn't know any better.
I had a very small worldview at the time.
I ain't been nowhere.
(10:52):
I ain't done nothing.
Moving to North Carolina was the first intentional risk I had taken where I was fully aware of the fact that this was a risk.
I had no idea how it would turn out.
But I did it anyway.
But when I realized that writing Spirit, it made me stop.
I was just like, oh.
(11:16):
Until you can find freedom in this sacred part of you, you're on timeout.
You are on punishment.
I can't have you fucking up.
What's possible if you are gonna create as if you belong to anybody else but yourself, you're done.
And I promise you, I didn't write anything else for several [00:11:00] years and Spirit is still undone.
Now when I revisit Spirit, now it's a different ball game, and I have gotten further in the book.
(11:40):
But I've just been prioritizing other things.
I'm determined and you can, you all can hold me accountable.
Accountable.
You all can hold me accountable, if you will, to finish spirit of the movement.
Now fast forward 10 plus years later and I'm no longer creating as if I belong to any and everybody else.
Now I'm living like it.
(12:04):
You know how they say the older you get too and you like my, like the older you get, like my story swinging in the backyard.
I like my story of swinging in the backyard and I was fitting the parkour off the, and I was about to, and I was fitting the parkour off the roof and over the fence.
The older you get, the less inclined you are to doing stuff like that.
You start weighing the outcome and the outcome is you probably shouldn't do that.
Impulse or not.
We got some good sense.
(12:28):
So I had begun to live as if I belonged to everyone else.
And this is before Momentum.
This is before the I Am affirmation deck or anything else I had created.
I hadn't I hadn't started the book.
I hadn't done any of that.
So when I mentioned in one of the episodes of On [00:12:00] Becoming of how it's not a light switch, it's a process, I first identified the problem 10 years before I identified it again on a larger scale of simply becoming the person that I never wanted to be.
(12:52):
But became any damn way and was an active participant as I was doing it.
This was how I was living.
This was my life.
This was my, this was, these were my decisions every single day.
And when I realized that this still has the, this is still layered under the burden of how I saw myself, but I decided that it is time to begin to work on that.
I didn't stop working.
(13:16):
I, I would be on that, hot ass platform for the next two years, but I begin to do the work and start to move.
Towards sovereignty, liberation, and cl when I talk to my clients and or people that I care about.
And I tell them, listen, we are born in a tunnel.
If this [00:13:00] world had its way, we, they would we would be walking around with horse blinders on literally if this world had its way and that wasn't crazy, just stay focused on doing what you need to do and leave this world.
The same as when you found it, please and thank you.
Or worse when we deal with climate, but I ain't gonna go there.
(13:40):
Or worse if we wanna talk about a climate crisis and the fact that there really isn't any resource that's unlimited, although we act like it is.
Besides that, leave the world exactly as you found it.
And there's a quote by James Baldwin that I love.
In fact, I put it in the first advisor to the Throne book.
It says, the world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
And I think that's all of our duty really.
(14:04):
Is to leave it different.
Find your liberation and your sovereignty inside of this tunnel that you were born in, you inherited.
Because at some point the awareness is gonna start and cracks are going to begin to appear in that tunnel.
the amazing transmutation of darkness is when light hits it and it has no choice but to recede try to keep a dark room [00:14:00] dark.
With some light shining in it, it's impossible.
So as these cracks appear in the tunnel where you're like, oh wait, that ain't right.
(14:28):
And when I'm finishing Spirit and I'm trying to write, I'm like, wait a minute.
This is not my work, actually.
This is not what I wanna say.
This isn't how I feel.
These aren't the messages that I want to convey.
Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put this over here for a minute.
(14:52):
That was a crack and so many other cracks happening along the way, but then that walk to Fulton Street that day and the voice in my head said.
Talib, why are we doing this?
Is this necessary?
Because I'm really hot under this coat and I wish that we could just turn around, go do something else with our day.
You wanna play hooky.
That was a crack And then being laid off and destroy, re having my relationship destroyed and rebuilt more than once, and you realize the real risk in love, and and then Ipec happened and momentum happened and the fussings and all these cracks.
(15:16):
And some [00:15:00] people, just like the aversion we have to risk, have a even higher aversion to freedom.
And so instead of taking a rock and throwing.
Throwing it at those cracks so they can get bigger and bigger.
We retreat like I don't know what's in the light, but I damn sure know what's in the dark.
'cause I've been here most of my life.
I know what's in here and it's warm.
(15:40):
And not only is it warm, but it's familiar.
Like I know how to, I know how to be in this space, I'm under the radar.
Can't nobody see me?
Ain't nobody talking shit.
Ain't nobody waiting for my downfall.
This dancey.
(16:04):
Ain't no holleration or hateration in this here dancery out there.
I don't know.
It probably is a lot of it, but in here, I'm cool.
Nah.
Realizing that you don't belong to anyone but yourself means that when these cracks appear in your tu in, in your tunnel, then you get the, that show opportunity to seize the moment and take whatever you can find and start chucking it at these holes so that they can become [00:16:00] bigger and bigger and more and more expansive until nothing else exists.
But the light, you're self aware.
(16:28):
Now the only voice louder than yours is maybe your kids, but other than that, you calling the shots.
It's on your terms with love.
With love, but I've had enough of performing.
I can't be anything other than myself anymore.
I can't do anything else but pursue the life that I want and all I want.
If you ask me right now Talib, what do you want people to do with this conversation?
(16:52):
With this idea of assessing who's living in your mind, rent free.
When you go and make a decision for yourself, who's the, who's who, what's, who's invisible finger is tapping you, tapping that button on the side of your head that says we don't do that.
We don't think like that.
We don't move like that.
Like what?
What you doing?
(17:16):
what I call repression oppression and suppression of being everything that you feel in your heart that if [00:17:00] it were up to you, you would do guess what?
It is up to you.
I don't know anybody else that it could be up to.
If you think about it, and this is with responsibilities, this is with children and spouses and families.
I've seen I've been working in the youth space for a long time and I remember meeting this young man in Brooklyn, New York at an event I was doing with another brother and that with another, brother I met in Momentum.
And I was talking to this kid.
(17:40):
He was a senior in high school.
And I was like, what do you want to do?
What where, what's next for you?
And he says I wanna go away to college.
He wanted to do something dope.
And I was like, oh man, that sounds really cool.
(18:04):
He said, yeah, but I'm not gonna be able to.
Why?
I have younger siblings and.
My mother she's, my mom, my dad they're, they're sick and they can't really work.
And so I just have to stay here and help out the family.
And he was a child.
(18:28):
And, I wanted to say, do you, but I'm not his, I'm not in this man's life and I [00:18:00] can only hope that one day he discovered that.
His life is his own.
And even though there are binds and bounds And a and real reasons, quote unquote to justify being a supporting character in your own damn life.
One day if you make it far and long enough that the depression of living a life that isn't your own.
depression and anxiety and the stress of living a life that is not your own.
My only hope is that one day a voice in your head says, do we?
(18:52):
Do we have to?
Are we supposed to?
Is this what you need?
Should you be here of all the damn places that you could be and that you have the experience of life not serving you so far.
As well as a dose a a as well as some courage that you'll recognize that I only belong to myself.
[00:19:00] I thank you for my parents and their parents and all the parents before them that allow me to sit on this mic and be here today to say exactly what I'm saying right now.
(19:16):
I don't belong to you.
You don't belong to me and you are free to do whatever the hell you want whenever , hell you want to with the understanding that just like you were big enough to go and do it, you gotta be big enough to deal whatever comes.
That's the courage piece.
And you'll find the more that you march to your own drum and plot out your own path, all the people that you thought you belonged to will now see you as possibility.
I think it's.
And this is only my opinion.
(19:40):
I say nothing for fact or truth.
This is my observation of the world.
I think it's a tragedy when we, I think it's a tragedy that we never realize that the liberation of the people that we care the most about is directly.
Connected to our own freedom.
[00:20:00] There's things people just won't get until they see it with their own two eyes.
And being free is something that evades a lot of people.
(20:04):
And so just imagine the people that you're holding on to all the things that you don't want for their sake seeing you I.
Being free.
They see you pissed at your six figure job.
They know how hard you work every day for somebody else who can't be bothered to respect you and your work with their fucking aggressions.
That's not everybody but those who have experienced it, know what the hell I'm talking about.
They see you can't wait for the weekend or for a vacation because having some time to yourself is a luxury.
(20:28):
Even if it's a staycation, they know all that.
And they're here for you and they support you, and they listen and they party with you.
But just think of how you would break their brain living a free life, peaceful, joyful, [00:21:00] content, purposeful.
What would that change in them?
Grumpy Wizdom.
It's time.
(20:52):
Wherever you are, whoever you are is time.
To recognize that you don't belong to anyone else but yourself and your life As Anais Nin is quoted as saying life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.
Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.
You have to have the courage to dismantle the tunnel.
You have to have some courage to seek freedom.
To expand your worldview, to see yourself as more than anyone ever expected you to be, including yourself.
(21:16):
Belonging to yourself simply means that you are moving a court.
You are unfolding according to.
You are becoming exactly who you are meant to be.
And as I said before, there are people who will live and die.
Never being anything more than the perceived and real, and the perceived and real [00:22:00] expectations of their life.
Don't be that person.
Quote in my book, I have a in my book, Say Less (21:40):
Call it Justice, I have this haiku that says, some people die assholes, don't be some people, and that can go for anything you want it to go for in the sense of belonging and ensuring that you.
Live a life that is for you and by you.
Be urgent about that because you know, Not the day or the hour and before you get the opportunity to live and exist on your own terms.
For yourself could be too late.
Release that shit.
Release it.
(22:04):
I'm grateful for that hot ass platform because if it was cool down there.
I may not have ever decided that this ain't it.
Like this part right here, ain't it?
Now I would go on to work in Teaneck for another 13 years.
Again, [00:23:00] it's a process, but at least that light was shining in and I saw it.
I'm coming.
(22:28):
I'll be there.
I'll be there.
Gimme some time.
Just give me some time and give thanks that I still had the time and still have the time.
Every day is a new opportunity to do it different.
Just live your life.
(22:52):
Thank you for listening.
Until next time, peace.
Talib (23:00):
AYO!
If this episode sparked something in you don't keep it to yourself, follow or subscribe, rate the show, drop a review, and pass it on.
Wanna see the episode videos?
Become a member of the Grumpy Wizdom Inner Circle on Patreon to unlock exclusive content, early access, and a fresh Zine every three episodes.
Join now at patreon.com/grumpywizdom to explore more of my creative work or connect professionally.
Head to talibjasir.com.
(23:24):
And podcast fam, if you create, produce, or move in audio.
Don't miss the 7th Annual Afros & Audio Podcast Festival, Festival Festival October 16th through the 19th in Baltimore.
details at afrosandaudio.com.
All links are in the show notes.
Thank you for listening.
Let's ride.
Grumpy Wizdom 5 talib-jasir--he-him-_2_06-02-2025_164725: [00:00:00] Ayo!
(00:04):
Welcome back to Grumpy Wizdom.
I'm your host, Talib Jasir, and in case you forgot, I'm the founder of Afros & Audio Podcast Festival.
The first podcast conference for and by Black podcast creators and audio professionals in the world, not just the city, the world.
I wanna talk this talk.
On belonging, and I'm gonna clarify what sense of belonging.
I mean Pretty quickly.
(00:28):
I remember working on 42nd Street, New York.
And I'm in Jersey City, which means I've got to take the path train from Grove Street Station to the World Trade Center.
Get off at World Trade Center, walk to Fulton Street, walk to Fulton Street to get on the fifth or sixth train.
40 to Grand Central and then walk up the street to my job.
And it was cool.
I enjoyed the commute.
(00:52):
It was my first job in the city, and I [00:01:00] had been trying to get a job for mad long.
Oh my God.
I can't tell you how long I was trying to get a job when I moved from North Carolina to New Jersey, talk about risk from the last episode.
I had a job in North Carolina.
Then I come up here and I'm unemployed.
Then I go up there and I'm unemployed for a damn near a year or plus my wife.
(01:16):
had done worked two jobs by the time I get one and I'm, and they calling her, they calling for her for a job when I'm the one sitting at home.
So talk about risk.
Anyway, so I'm glad I'm finally working.
Am I happy that I'm paying $8 to park every day?
Getting on the train and paying for that every day and then rinse and repeat Monday through Friday.
I'm in school also.
(01:40):
This is when I'm back in school, working to finish because America is a society of credentials.
And it seemed like for the Gen X generation, we were the generation that was kept out without a degree.
Our parents were able to get [00:02:00] jobs and they'd still be at their job 20, 40, 50 years, no degree, just longevity, starting in entry level and working their way up and staying in the company until it was retirement time, but not us.
I guess they figured.
This door been open a little too long.
Let's now put on the, you must have this degree in order to work here for some bullshit.
(02:04):
So I figured that I wasn't getting calls for jobs and I wasn't, being picked because I didn't finish school.
I didn't finish copping back in the day.
I didn't finish Coppin State University back in the day.
I left three and a half years in, and so I was back in school at St.
Peter's University in Jersey City, go peacocks and I and I was working on 42nd Street.
And so on this particular day, and let me just stop to give an honorable mention to the heat spirit that I possesses the Fulton Street platform.
(02:28):
Where you [00:03:00] stand for the five and six and the only air, and the only relief you're going to receive is what I call Rat Breeze because it's rats in the tunnel and the wind is pushing their breeze.
Anyway, for anybody who didn't need that, I'm sorry.
But that's the only relief you get is when the train comes by and pushes rat, breathe rat breeze in your face for a minute you are like, oh, sweet relief.
I promise I won't say that word.
Those words anymore combined.
It is hot as hell and I'm talking about when it's cold outside, when it's negative two degrees, it's still hot.
(02:52):
You by the time you walk from the tray, this could just be me 'cause I run hot because by the time I walk from brisk walk, because you were in New York, so stop playing.
Get the fuck out the way.
By the time I walked from Path Station.
Stand at the light, cross the street, walk around the corner, go down the stairs at Fulton.
I'm sweating.
Like I might as well be in New Orleans in mid-August.
(03:16):
.
So I put this, so I had started even wearing my north face in a, in a.
And a [00:04:00] t-shirt underneath my coat with my shirt over my arm.
Like I, that was how hot I was by the time I get to the station.
Anyway, you get the damn point.
So it was one of these days where I was just like, not this again.
(03:40):
Like I, if I have to stand on this platform.
One more 'gin, it is, I asked myself.
You say you don't like this?
Nah, man, I hate this shit.
Okay?
Why are you doing it?
(04:04):
What you mean why I'm doing it?
Because I'm supposed to do this.
Working, I'm doing, I'm supposed to do because I'm supposed to do this.
I should be working.
That's what I'm doing.
Like why you asking me that question?
(04:28):
You, me, I'm you.
You know what the answer is already?
We supposed to do this, we need this.
Do we?
Okay.
What?
(04:52):
What you trying to say?
It seems to me that we've been acting like we belong to somebody else besides ourself.
Break it down.
I don't understand.
Every time we talk about doing other things with our life.
Every time we talk about doing other things with our life, you start talking about what you should do, what you're supposed to do, and what you need to do.
(05:16):
And I'm just wondering where all of that came from because we have yet to ask ourselves what we want to do.
All right.
You got a point, but we [00:05:00] need this.
I haven't worked in, but we need this.
Do you?
Yeah, I do.
(05:40):
But while we're on the subject of belonging, you might be onto something.
Hold on.
Let me think about this.
Yeah.
I've been operating like I belong to others.
I can see that.
(06:04):
I can see where you're going with that.
Every time I wanna go and write, I start thinking about what if this happens while I'm not at the house?
And what if I'm needed?
What if...this is selfish.
You can't, just because you want to go and write it doesn't mean you can.
Can't you?
(06:28):
I'm like, shut up.
I'm, processing this.
That was rhetorical.
Gimme a minute.
Perceptionally the, sometimes we've gotta discern between perception and reality.
And in that moment I was, it was, it had become my reality, but it was still perception because who I thought I belonged to they weren't waking up in the morning and saying, and making sure that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing.
(06:52):
Just implied, but they were doing what they thought they were supposed to be doing.
So naturally I complied.
I fell in line.
This is what you do.
[00:06:00] You live America's dream.
You go to the school system and get taught what you're supposed to be taught so that you can act how you're supposed to act.
(07:16):
You go on to the next phase of life, and whether it's a HBCU or a PWI.
You're still being taught colonized education with the occasional disruptors as I had a real big disruptor.
At Coppin State University, rIP to Baba.
Leon Baba, Dr.
Leon Hosey, who changed my life.
I, but for the most part, we're going there for a reason to get credentialed to exist in a society that.
(07:40):
Will still pick and choose according to your presentation.
So I broke it down okay?
You acting like you belong to her and them.
And you're acting accordingly.
Like you moving, like this is what they put on a piece of paper.
Okay, Talib, this is what you're gonna do from this time to this time, [00:07:00] okay?
(08:04):
From this age to this age, this is where you need to be and this is exactly what you're supposed to do.
And then here I, and did anybody ask you if you liked it?
Okay.
Thank you.
And then from here, from this time span, you gonna be walking from World Trade Center to Fulton Street and the sweat on your back is just proof positive that you were on the right track.
Good job.
(08:28):
Nobody had said that.
That was my perception of what they all wanted, but.
If I were to ask them at the time, they probably would've said, whatever you wanna do, but I never asked them.
I just went according to, these plans that were actually non-existent, except in socialization and constructs that must be dismantled.
Have, And our Gen Zs and our gen alphas, they've taken up the torch.
It's coming down, it's coming down.
(08:52):
Give thanks.
But after I had that conversation, that's when I realized that I had been really walking a path as if I didn't have a say.
[00:08:00] My first book, Spirit of the Movement, it's a novel.
I haven't written a novel since, and that is still incomplete, but it's a fictional story about a woman who was born inside of the Black Power Movement and.
Because of the, decisions and choices of her, of the adults in her life.
She becomes a casualty of this war on the Blackness.
(09:16):
And this is this, and it's her story.
Her name is Spirit.
Spirit of the movement.
One day I'll finish it.
I promise you it's a dope story and I'm not just saying that because I wrote it, but I am I guess saying it 'cause I wrote it.
So anyway, I wrote that book when I first moved to North Carolina and finished it, I sent it off to an editor.
(09:40):
She red lined the shit out of it.
Send it back to me.
And as I started to rewrite it, I was beginning to feel disconnected from it.
And that was the first time I realized that I was creating as if I belonged to so to others, like I [00:09:00] was thinking as I was creating what happens if this person reads this and they're gonna wonder where it's fiction?
Who cares?
But.
(10:04):
Again, we are socialized in such a fishbowl experience that we think all eyes are on us because this fear of being assessed and judged and measured by other people, whether they're strangers or family members or friends, paralyzes a lot of us.
And even if it doesn't paralyze us, we move, we do.
We create, we are constantly considering what they quote unquote say.
Whoever they are in your life, we all have 'em.
I've heard people calling them monitoring spirits.
I think, and I think there is that in the world, but I think more than monitoring spirits, it's the energy that comes with, comes from being [00:10:00] monitored.
(10:28):
And all of us hate that shit.
Some of us just don't know it.
So that being my first understanding of what it felt like to create as if I was writing it for specific people's eyes.
And not a world, there's a world open, but I didn't know any better.
I had a very small worldview at the time.
I ain't been nowhere.
(10:52):
I ain't done nothing.
Moving to North Carolina was the first intentional risk I had taken where I was fully aware of the fact that this was a risk.
I had no idea how it would turn out.
But I did it anyway.
But when I realized that writing Spirit, it made me stop.
I was just like, oh.
(11:16):
Until you can find freedom in this sacred part of you, you're on timeout.
You are on punishment.
I can't have you fucking up.
What's possible if you are gonna create as if you belong to anybody else but yourself, you're done.
And I promise you, I didn't write anything else for several [00:11:00] years and Spirit is still undone.
Now when I revisit Spirit, now it's a different ball game, and I have gotten further in the book.
(11:40):
But I've just been prioritizing other things.
I'm determined and you can, you all can hold me accountable.
Accountable.
You all can hold me accountable, if you will, to finish spirit of the movement.
Now fast forward 10 plus years later and I'm no longer creating as if I belong to any and everybody else.
Now I'm living like it.
(12:04):
You know how they say the older you get too and you like my, like the older you get, like my story swinging in the backyard.
I like my story of swinging in the backyard and I was fitting the parkour off the, and I was about to, and I was fitting the parkour off the roof and over the fence.
The older you get, the less inclined you are to doing stuff like that.
You start weighing the outcome and the outcome is you probably shouldn't do that.
Impulse or not.
We got some good sense.
(12:28):
So I had begun to live as if I belonged to everyone else.
And this is before Momentum.
This is before the I Am affirmation deck or anything else I had created.
I hadn't I hadn't started the book.
I hadn't done any of that.
So when I mentioned in one of the episodes of On [00:12:00] Becoming of how it's not a light switch, it's a process, I first identified the problem 10 years before I identified it again on a larger scale of simply becoming the person that I never wanted to be.
(12:52):
But became any damn way and was an active participant as I was doing it.
This was how I was living.
This was my life.
This was my, this was, these were my decisions every single day.
And when I realized that this still has the, this is still layered under the burden of how I saw myself, but I decided that it is time to begin to work on that.
I didn't stop working.
(13:16):
I, I would be on that, hot ass platform for the next two years, but I begin to do the work and start to move.
Towards sovereignty, liberation, and cl when I talk to my clients and or people that I care about.
And I tell them, listen, we are born in a tunnel.
If this [00:13:00] world had its way, we, they would we would be walking around with horse blinders on literally if this world had its way and that wasn't crazy, just stay focused on doing what you need to do and leave this world.
The same as when you found it, please and thank you.
Or worse when we deal with climate, but I ain't gonna go there.
(13:40):
Or worse if we wanna talk about a climate crisis and the fact that there really isn't any resource that's unlimited, although we act like it is.
Besides that, leave the world exactly as you found it.
And there's a quote by James Baldwin that I love.
In fact, I put it in the first advisor to the Throne book.
It says, the world is before you and you need not take it or leave it as it was when you came in.
And I think that's all of our duty really.
(14:04):
Is to leave it different.
Find your liberation and your sovereignty inside of this tunnel that you were born in, you inherited.
Because at some point the awareness is gonna start and cracks are going to begin to appear in that tunnel.
the amazing transmutation of darkness is when light hits it and it has no choice but to recede try to keep a dark room [00:14:00] dark.
With some light shining in it, it's impossible.
So as these cracks appear in the tunnel where you're like, oh wait, that ain't right.
(14:28):
And when I'm finishing Spirit and I'm trying to write, I'm like, wait a minute.
This is not my work, actually.
This is not what I wanna say.
This isn't how I feel.
These aren't the messages that I want to convey.
Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put this over here for a minute.
(14:52):
That was a crack and so many other cracks happening along the way, but then that walk to Fulton Street that day and the voice in my head said.
Talib, why are we doing this?
Is this necessary?
Because I'm really hot under this coat and I wish that we could just turn around, go do something else with our day.
You wanna play hooky.
That was a crack And then being laid off and destroy, re having my relationship destroyed and rebuilt more than once, and you realize the real risk in love, and and then Ipec happened and momentum happened and the fussings and all these cracks.
(15:16):
And some [00:15:00] people, just like the aversion we have to risk, have a even higher aversion to freedom.
And so instead of taking a rock and throwing.
Throwing it at those cracks so they can get bigger and bigger.
We retreat like I don't know what's in the light, but I damn sure know what's in the dark.
'cause I've been here most of my life.
I know what's in here and it's warm.
(15:40):
And not only is it warm, but it's familiar.
Like I know how to, I know how to be in this space, I'm under the radar.
Can't nobody see me?
Ain't nobody talking shit.
Ain't nobody waiting for my downfall.
This dancey.
(16:04):
Ain't no holleration or hateration in this here dancery out there.
I don't know.
It probably is a lot of it, but in here, I'm cool.
Nah.
Realizing that you don't belong to anyone but yourself means that when these cracks appear in your tu in, in your tunnel, then you get the, that show opportunity to seize the moment and take whatever you can find and start chucking it at these holes so that they can become [00:16:00] bigger and bigger and more and more expansive until nothing else exists.
But the light, you're self aware.
(16:28):
Now the only voice louder than yours is maybe your kids, but other than that, you calling the shots.
It's on your terms with love.
With love, but I've had enough of performing.
I can't be anything other than myself anymore.
I can't do anything else but pursue the life that I want and all I want.
If you ask me right now Talib, what do you want people to do with this conversation?
(16:52):
With this idea of assessing who's living in your mind, rent free.
When you go and make a decision for yourself, who's the, who's who, what's, who's invisible finger is tapping you, tapping that button on the side of your head that says we don't do that.
We don't think like that.
We don't move like that.
Like what?
What you doing?
(17:16):
what I call repression oppression and suppression of being everything that you feel in your heart that if [00:17:00] it were up to you, you would do guess what?
It is up to you.
I don't know anybody else that it could be up to.
If you think about it, and this is with responsibilities, this is with children and spouses and families.
I've seen I've been working in the youth space for a long time and I remember meeting this young man in Brooklyn, New York at an event I was doing with another brother and that with another, brother I met in Momentum.
And I was talking to this kid.
(17:40):
He was a senior in high school.
And I was like, what do you want to do?
What where, what's next for you?
And he says I wanna go away to college.
He wanted to do something dope.
And I was like, oh man, that sounds really cool.
(18:04):
He said, yeah, but I'm not gonna be able to.
Why?
I have younger siblings and.
My mother she's, my mom, my dad they're, they're sick and they can't really work.
And so I just have to stay here and help out the family.
And he was a child.
(18:28):
And, I wanted to say, do you, but I'm not his, I'm not in this man's life and I [00:18:00] can only hope that one day he discovered that.
His life is his own.
And even though there are binds and bounds And a and real reasons, quote unquote to justify being a supporting character in your own damn life.
One day if you make it far and long enough that the depression of living a life that isn't your own.
depression and anxiety and the stress of living a life that is not your own.
My only hope is that one day a voice in your head says, do we?
(18:52):
Do we have to?
Are we supposed to?
Is this what you need?
Should you be here of all the damn places that you could be and that you have the experience of life not serving you so far.
As well as a dose a a as well as some courage that you'll recognize that I only belong to myself.
[00:19:00] I thank you for my parents and their parents and all the parents before them that allow me to sit on this mic and be here today to say exactly what I'm saying right now.
(19:16):
I don't belong to you.
You don't belong to me and you are free to do whatever the hell you want whenever , hell you want to with the understanding that just like you were big enough to go and do it, you gotta be big enough to deal whatever comes.
That's the courage piece.
And you'll find the more that you march to your own drum and plot out your own path, all the people that you thought you belonged to will now see you as possibility.
I think it's.
And this is only my opinion.
(19:40):
I say nothing for fact or truth.
This is my observation of the world.
I think it's a tragedy when we, I think it's a tragedy that we never realize that the liberation of the people that we care the most about is directly.
Connected to our own freedom.
[00:20:00] There's things people just won't get until they see it with their own two eyes.
And being free is something that evades a lot of people.
(20:04):
And so just imagine the people that you're holding on to all the things that you don't want for their sake seeing you I.
Being free.
They see you pissed at your six figure job.
They know how hard you work every day for somebody else who can't be bothered to respect you and your work with their fucking aggressions.
That's not everybody but those who have experienced it, know what the hell I'm talking about.
They see you can't wait for the weekend or for a vacation because having some time to yourself is a luxury.
(20:28):
Even if it's a staycation, they know all that.
And they're here for you and they support you, and they listen and they party with you.
But just think of how you would break their brain living a free life, peaceful, joyful, [00:21:00] content, purposeful.
What would that change in them?
Grumpy Wizdom.
It's time.
(20:52):
Wherever you are, whoever you are is time.
To recognize that you don't belong to anyone else but yourself and your life As Anais Nin is quoted as saying life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.
Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.
You have to have the courage to dismantle the tunnel.
You have to have some courage to seek freedom.
To expand your worldview, to see yourself as more than anyone ever expected you to be, including yourself.
(21:16):
Belonging to yourself simply means that you are moving a court.
You are unfolding according to.
You are becoming exactly who you are meant to be.
And as I said before, there are people who will live and die.
Never being anything more than the perceived and real, and the perceived and real [00:22:00] expectations of their life.
Don't be that person.
Quote in my book, I have a in my book, Say Less (21:40):
Call it Justice, I have this haiku that says, some people die assholes, don't be some people, and that can go for anything you want it to go for in the sense of belonging and ensuring that you.
Live a life that is for you and by you.
Be urgent about that because you know, Not the day or the hour and before you get the opportunity to live and exist on your own terms.
For yourself could be too late.
Release that shit.
Release it.
(22:04):
I'm grateful for that hot ass platform because if it was cool down there.
I may not have ever decided that this ain't it.
Like this part right here, ain't it?
Now I would go on to work in Teaneck for another 13 years.
Again, [00:23:00] it's a process, but at least that light was shining in and I saw it.
I'm coming.
(22:28):
I'll be there.
I'll be there.
Gimme some time.
Just give me some time and give thanks that I still had the time and still have the time.
Every day is a new opportunity to do it different.
Just live your life.
(22:52):
Thank you for listening.
Until next time, peace.
Talib (23:00):
AYO!
If this episode sparked something in you don't keep it to yourself, follow or subscribe, rate the show, drop a review, and pass it on.
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Join now at patreon.com/grumpywizdom to explore more of my creative work or connect professionally.
Head to talibjasir.com.
(23:24):
And podcast fam, if you create, produce, or move in audio.
Don't miss the 7th Annual Afros & Audio Podcast Festival, Festival Festival October 16th through the 19th in Baltimore.
details at afrosandaudio.com.
All links are in the show notes.
Thank you for listening.
Let's ride.
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