In the media, one of my favorite music artists is becoming more and more associated with lunacy than his creative genius. You can’t blame a professional entertainer for crafting ways to get attention. That’s literally their job. But I think what we’re seeing looks like a lot more than just buffoonery and trolling.
Influence Food Chain
Who do you ask for help when you are at the top of the Influence Food Chain?
Have you had a moment in life where you were you just THAT DUDE or THAT CHICK? Things are good at home. You’re killing it at work. Grades are top notch in school. People want to know how you got it so well. They love to see you coming, so they can rub some good luck off you.
What if that was your life every day? What if you had become some sort of beacon or modern-day superhero for people?
In those moments of prosperity, haven’t you felt like ‘you can’t tell me nothin’? I have. And I imagine it’s like that with celebrities.
The Kanye West Show
There are 3 types of audiences that tune in to Kanye West episodes:
- Nah, Fam — This is the group that says he’s cuckoo; I don’t F with Ye anymore; put a fork in em, he’s done; or stick to rapping.
- Good TV — Let’s make his rants go viral! Let’s watch a successful black entertainer separate himself from his community and pretend he’ll be accepted as one of us! Dance, clown!
- Bamboozled — Those that could barely sit through the entire white house minstrel show. They’re a little heartbroken. Also, they’re sad because watching someone with no situational awareness glorify someone else with no situational awareness is like, is like — well have you ever seen a blind person or really elderly person fall down or look for something and before you get to them you see swarms of people walk right over them? It’s like it watching that happen.
A Fan of Good Music and Good Support Systems
Type 3 is about where I land. Watching Kanye in the Oval Office with Donald Trump gave me an unsettling feeling as if he was the only person in the room who didn’t know why he was there.
As someone who has firsthand knowledge of how impactful a support system can be when you’re going off the rails, I wonder if Kanye West has become so high up — in his respective world — that no one can get through to him. Does he have anyone in his orbit to ground him? To get him a Snickers® Bar?
If your success puts you in a place where the people around you regularly cater to you, are you really winning? Having people that will check you is invaluable. Especially for someone like me who is a habitual larger-than-life thinker. I’m Level 99 at creating my own realities — with both good and bad outcomes.
I look for people that will pull me to the side. They’re getting harder to find, so their value continues to rise.
Therapy Helped But…
One thing that bothered me about therapy sessions back during my marriage troubles was that one time a week for one hour, I had an opportunity to talk freely with someone in-person.
In comparison to the hours of mentally draining work and frigid animosity at home, that one-hour conversation was like doing a warmup of 10-jumping jacks before doing a triathlon. The system wasn’t designed to be a fix-all or fix much of your mental pains. It helped with developing coping habits.
What I realized later — a lot later — was that I needed more therapists around me. Not actual licensed counselors, but people with character traits like optimism, empathy, ambition, retrospection, introspection. I needed a book club! My point is that our day-to-day team has to be people that can support and ground us.
Consider This
Let’s use Kanye’s exploits, as told by news outlets and social media, as a prompt for us to consider the people we’re around every day. Take a tally. Do a little roll call.
Ask yourself if the company you keep wants you to thrive, wants you to lose, or just wants to enjoy the show.