I always wanted an older brother. I thought that one day I would find an older brother or someone that would take that spot when I was a kid. I loved and still love my sister to death, but she didn’t exactly cut it when it came to being that brother I wanted. She wasn’t very good at sports and it just didn’t seem fair to keep beating her in basketball. Plus, I guess I should point out that she didn’t like it that much and I wasn’t interested in playing dolls with her. Nine years into life, I received that brother I always wanted. He liked sports and he was into video games, but there was only one problem… he was nine years younger than me. You know how much of a drag it was to take him over to the homie’s house to play video games? It wasn’t like he could play with us, he wasn’t very good. It wasn’t until one day I took my five year old brother to my friend’s house and we were playing Halo on the Xbox and he kept asking if he could play. I always told him no, but my friend said something to him that was borderline mean and suddenly, I slammed his remote and got in his face and told him to never talk to my little brother like that. My brother played a game during the next turn.

That moment was the turning point for me. I realized I had to be the older brother I never had at that exact point. I had to be the one to teach my kid bro that he’d get beat up at our particular school that he’d get beat up if he admitted that he liked Backstreet Boys, but make it comfortable enough where he could blast that in my room if needed. I had to be the older brother that I never had to take him to the park to do 1 on 1 drills for him and break down plays for him to make. He’d hate me for going so hard with him in practice, but he’d appreciate it later on down the road when he made the basketball team. A few years later that’s exactly what he did in elementary school. Won back to back titles in 4th and 5th grade, a feat no other school had accomplished at the time. Crazy, right? Then he went on to do what I never had the courage to do, which was make his junior high team and play some really good ball. The kid even got to make his freshman high school basketball team at my old alma matter. He was literally doing exactly what I never thought I was capable of. That’s when I really realized that I was put on this earth to be a big brother and not have an older brother. Maybe I wouldn’t have been as good of a brother if I had an example set in front of me.

That brings me to the point of this, which is that there are tons of people that I owe much of my appreciation to that I never actually put into action. There’s two different type of appreciation I think that I should share, one being that I am grateful for those that always tried to keep me on the positive side of everything, trying to teach me things the hard way. I can’t say enough to put into words how much I appreciate those people. One of the times I remember the most was that I made fun of a kid that everyone else was bullying on my bus stop. I got called into the Dean’s office with my parents (middle school). My parents made me invite him over to the crib and eat dinner and play video games with him. The dude was actually really cool after all. I never made fun of a kid that was being bullied again and I learned my lesson at a really young age. I didn’t make a few friends with the cooler kids because they didn’t want to be seen with the kid who was friends with the less cooler kid. It didn’t matter after a while though. Lesson learned. The other that I appreciate are the ones who saved me from wasting more time on them whether it was by choice or it was by accident. So many times did I try and save someone from what I thought was themselves, but I kept getting push back. I was SO hardheaded that I never realized that I can’t be the reason someone ever gets saved. They have to want to save themselves that much more. I was going to hate myself later on if I kept wasting my time trying to change someone.

At the end of the day, I think what I want to make clear is that you should be appreciative for it all. For the good and the bad. All of it is imperfect and that in itself only creates perfect scenarios for yourself. I think you just have to start taking a step back every now and then to look at it from a different perspective. Things truly don’t happen to us, they just happen for us. Once you figure that out, you’ll have all you need and anger won’t even be an option for things that don’t work out the way you want them to.