3
" On May 26th, 2003,
Aaron Ralston was hiking,
a boulder fell on his right hand,
he waited four days,
he then amputated
his own arm with a pocketknife.
On New Year’s Eve,
a woman was bungee jumping,
the cord broke,
she fell into a river
and had to swim back to land
in crocodile-infested waters
with a broken collarbone.
Claire Champlin was smashed in the face
by a five-pound watermelon
being propelled by a slingshot.
Mathew Brobst was hit by a javelin.
David Striegl was actually
punched in the mouth by a kangaroo.
The most amazing part of these stories
is when asked about the experience
they all smiled, shrugged and said
“I guess things could’ve been worse.”
So go ahead,
tell me you’re having a bad day.
Tell me about the traffic.
Tell me about your boss.
Tell me about the job you’ve been trying to quit for the past four years.
Tell me the morning is just a townhouse burning to the ground and the snooze button is a fire extinguisher.
Tell me the alarm clock
stole the keys to your smile,
drove it into 7 am
and the crash totaled your happiness.
Tell me.
Tell me how blessed are we to have tragedy
so small it can fit on the tips of our tongues.
When Evan lost his legs he was speechless.
When my cousin was assaulted
she didn’t speak for 48 hours.
When my uncle was murdered,
we had to send out a search party
to find my father’s voice.
Most people have no idea
that tragedy and silence
often have the exact same address.
When your day is a museum of disappointments,
hanging from events that were outside of your control,
when you feel like your guardian angel put in his two weeks notice two months ago
and just decided not to tell you,
when it seems like God
is just a babysitter that’s always on the phone,
when you get punched in the esophagus by a fistful of life.
Remember,
every year
two million people die of dehydration.
So it doesn’t matter if
the glass is half full or half empty.
There’s water in the cup.
Drink it and stop complaining.
Muscle is created by lifting things
that are designed to weigh us down.
When your shoulders are heavy
stand up straight and call it exercise.
Life is a gym membership
with a really complicated cancellation policy.
Remember,
you will survive,
things could be worse,
and we are never given
anything we can’t handle.
When the whole world crumbles,
you have to build a new one
out of all the pieces that are still here.
Remember,
you are still here.
The human heart beats
approximately 4,000 times per hour
and each pulse,
each throb,
each palpitation is a trophy,
engraved with the words
“You are still alive.”
You are still alive.
So act like it. "
― Rudy Francisco , Helium
6
" I was 18 wen I started driving
I was 18 the first time I was pulled over.
It was 2 AM on a Saturday
The officer spilled his lights all over my rearview mirror,
he splashed out of the car with his hand already on his weapon,
and looked at me the way a tsunami looks at a beach house.
Immediately, I could tell he was the kind of man
who brings a gun to a food fight.
He called me son
and I thought to myself,
that's an interesting way of pronouncing "boy,"
He asks for my license and registration,
wants to know what I'm doing in this nieghborhood,
if the car is stolen,
if I have any drugs
and most days, I know how to grab my voice
by the handle and swing it like a hammer.
But instead,
I picked it up like a shard of glass.
Scared of what might happen if I didn't hold it carefully
because I know that this much melanin
and that uniform is a plotline to a film that
can easily end with a chalk outline baptism,
me trying to make a body bag look stylish for the camera
and becoming the newest coat in a closet full of RIP hashtags.
Once, a friend of a friend asked me
why there aren't more black people in the X Games
and I said, "You don't get it."
Being black is one of the most extreme sports in America.
We don't need to invent new ways of risking our lives
because the old ones have been working for decades.
Jim Crow may have left the nest,
but our streets are still covered with its feathers.
Being black in America is knowing there's a thin line
between a traffic stop and the cemetery,
it's the way my body tenses up
when I hear a police siren in a song,
it's the quiver in my stomach when a cop car is behind me,
it's the sigh of relief when I turn right and he doesn't.
I don't need to go volcano surfing.
Hell, I have an adrenaline rush every time an officer
drives right past without pulling me over
and I realize
I'm going to make it home safe.
This time. "
― Rudy Francisco , Helium
