79 Hours
There are 168 hours a week. 40 are dedicated to work. 49ish hours are dedicated to sleep. Leaving us with roughly 79 hours left of the week.
That’s another full-time job or part-time job, or family time, or gym time, or reading, or hanging out, or rotting in bed, etc.
Point is, 79 hours of the week gives us the opportunity to change. Stay with me now.
I’ve dated all kinds of Women:
The Scurnitzed Latina daughter of the family
The never-enough hard-working Vietnamese
The Radical Latina who wanted to punish “The Man”
The Muslim Pakistani who became my neighbor once we started dating (whoops_)
The Alcoholic Latina who everyone thought I was the problem
etc.,
Point being, none of them were using their 79 hours to change their lives for the better. They had “roles” to play in terms of helping their families, siblings, nieces & nephews. What was common was that none of them asked to jump into those roles.
They didn’t want to babysit their irresponsible sister’s children on a Friday Night (while Sister went to the same clubs she found her 2 baby daddies), they didn’t want to study on the weekend because their mother locked their keys away so they couldn’t sneak out, they didn’t wanna pack their father’s lunches cus their Mom passed, etc.
I could go on and on about their robbed lifestyle, but what choice did they have? 79 hours stolen to “help the family”. Most of them would get mad at me cus I would question their roles of being the daughter of the family, yet stepping up into the role of the Father. How did that make them feel and why? Response was all the same, “Without me, my family would fall apart.”
Now this is where they get mad at me lol (One of them almost slapped me too)
I stated, “Well maybe your old family was meant to fall apart, so your new family can begin.”
All were appalled by that statement. They questioned how can I be so selfish and ruthless towards family? I would then questioned them right back. How could the grown members in your family stumble so bad their offspring have to sacrifice their lives just to correct the last 30 years of their parents?
Why spend 79 hours correcting the past when you can forge a new future? We want all of our loved onces to succeed, but how can we, if we only water the dead gardens behind us instead of watering the current garden we’re standing on. To serve the selfish and to selflessly serve, are two very distcint types of service, but many can’t see it due to the wrong responsibilites of “Family”.
It’s been a few years since I've dated those gals, and I see them in the same problems 2-5+ years later. All those 79 hours and nothing has changed.
Shoutout to my brothers and my cousins, who we’ve all broken our inherited cycles of chaos and transformed them into beautiful new families and friendships. Not saying we came from the worst of the worst, nonsense. But the point of children is to raise them to be better than you were, and they are to do the same. That’s how change happens, by letting go of the past and facing the future.
Even if that means leaving the hands that made us and embracing the hands that guide our hands.
One of my favorite photos this year. On the beach of El Salvador and it was one of the best sunsets I’ve ever seen.