inspiring – Write 2 Be

So unless you don’t own a television or have a Facebook account, or any other form of social media, then you have heard the devastating news that legendary basketball player Kobe Bryant and his beautiful talented daughter died in a helicopter crash on Sunday along with two other teammates of hers, their parents, the pilot, and the assistant coach to the girls’ basketball team. The news was, to put it mildly, shocking and honestly when I first heard it I had to ask was this another one of those death hoax things going around on the internet. Sadly the news was true and surreal.

Any time someone dies it sends your mind into overdrive thinking so many different thoughts you can hardly keep them straight. However, in instances like this with someone of this stature, someone who seemed almost invincible, and who had such a huge impact on the lives of so many people that he had never even met, it just hits a bit differently. You look at the legacy of someone like him and you start to think about the inspiring words he has said and the amazing things that he has done and the things that he still had on his heart to do. You almost immediately can feel how big of a loss this is for his family, his friends, his fans, and the lives that he had yet to touch.

There are many things that can be said about Kobe Bryant, whether you were a fan of his or not, and that is that he had tremendous work ethic and his ambition was certainly something to strive for. He definitely lived his life to the fullest with purpose and with intention. For that very reason, while I’m sure there are many things that he wanted to do with his second act after retiring from basketball, I don’t think he left this earth with any regrets as to the legacy he was leaving behind because he never let any grass grow under his feet. He had a plan when he was younger about what he was going to do with his life and he committed to that plan and much the same way he planned out his basketball career at a young age, he had planned out his retirement as well and he made strides to accomplish those goals with every decision he made.

We all think that we have forever to do something on this earth with our lives. We have these massive plans for what we want to do years from now but the truth is that we don’t even know if we’ll get tomorrow, let alone years from now. We all have loved ones that we may not talk to on a regular basis or that we hold some kind of anger towards and are withholding forgiveness for some distant time in the future when we can forgive them at our leisure but what if that day doesn’t come.

We don’t know how much time any of us has on this earth and at any moment our time could be up. Don’t keep putting off until tomorrow the things that you want to accomplish in your life and more importantly don’t keep waiting to tell the people you love how you feel about them. It shouldn’t take moments like the death of someone who even after accomplishing so much still had such a promising future in order to get people to stop letting the grass grow under their feet (myself included) and putting things off until some tomorrow that may never come. You are here for a purpose so stop planning for a big future and start living today. Stop thinking people know how you feel and just tell them. Stop saying I’ll forgive them later and forgive them now. Until next time #BePresent #BeMindful #BeinFaith

Jimmetta Carpenter

Writer/Editor

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About Oscar Night 3

So this isn’t going to be a long post but I couldn’t let the day go by without acknowledging how amazing Oscar night was last night for women and people of color. The Oscars made history last night with the majority of the wins going to people of color and women, people who up until the last year or two were vastly overlooked when their work clearly deserved to be recognized.

It went from being the #Oscarssowhite a couple of years ago to being the #allinclusiveOscars this year. I must say that as a writer who had lofty dreams of one day writing my own screenplays and maybe even having a book or two of mine being made into a movie and winning an Oscar myself down the road it was definitely inspiring. I had put those hopes of an Oscar one day in my career to the side because frankly I couldn’t see them giving out too many Oscars to too many people of color because the Oscars has been considerably white washed throughout history ever since the Academy was created.

It seems that they are finally making room for a diverse group of artists to make waves and make a difference. It’s renewed my hope and even inspired a couple of new stories that I hope to tell over the course of my writing career. There’s something extra encouraging when you can see the possibility for your work to earn the highest honor an artist can achieve.

This is the type of encouragement that artists needed and I am so glad that the Oscars is finally catching up to including ALL artists in passing out distinguished honors. I hope you all are polishing up those novels and dusting off those screenplays that you gave up on because now’s the time to really get in the game. There just might be an Oscar in your future yet!