Leaving a legacy...

I've spent two weeks thinking about these questions... 

"What do you want to do in life?"

"What do you want to be in life?"

and...

"How do you these connect?"

Loaded questions.

At this point in my life when I think about my desires, my dreams, my goals, I have to consider how they affect the well being of my children (so I guess it's kind of funny that I'm writing this on my eldest daughter's second birthday). Now with that in mind, answering, "what do you want to do in life", becomes an extremely difficult question to answer.

I guess what I would say is that, more than anything, I want to leave a legacy for my children. When speaking of things that aren't tangible, I want to leave them a legacy of love, compassion, pride, thoughtfulness, joy and thoroughness. But I also want to leave them with a tangible legacy. I want to leave them with something that I built and owned, something that they can continue on with. I would be lying if I said that those thoughts had little to do with finances, but more importantly, the legacy I want to leave is one of which they can fully understand our obligation, as people, to help others. 

So I guess outside of leaving a legacy for my children, what I really want to do in life is help others. Whether it was growing up Samoan, which is a culture built on the foundation of family, helping each other and never leaving anybody behind, or coming to understand the struggle of illegal Mexican immigrants from my father, who was an illegal immigrant, my desire was always to find a way to help those that I cared about, blood relatives or not. As I grew older and became aware of the injustices many people face, that desire grew to being able to help anybody that needed it. I think about the things in life that have given me the most joy, outside of moments with my family, and many of them have to do with helping another person. It's a fulfilling feeling. 

It's a gift and a curse though, I feel. It's a gift in the sense that their excitement, their happiness, if even for just a moment, was a result of your action but it's a curse in that you begin to bear the burden of other people when you so desperately want to help. I've had many sleepless nights thinking of people I could have, should have but probably didn't help. 

When it comes to helping others, it's also about being able to provide an opportunity to the talented people that I have around me, an opportunity for them to see their talents flourish and, I guess, be able to monetize their talents so that they can sustain a life built off of their own talent. I've always been extremely thankful for anybody who took the chance to see what I had to offer and then provided avenues for me to succeed, so in some way I feel like I owe that to people around me. I also hope to be able to create my own lane to thrive off of my own ideas, my own passion as well.

I guess when looking at it that way, I feel the like "what I want to do in life" also has to do with being able to have ownership of everything I create or develop. I don't want to have to work for another person for the rest of my life. But I feel like this is going somewhere else, so we'll come back to this...

So Sam, what do you want to be in life then?

I. WANT. TO. BE. REMEMBERED.

Ok, that too, but let's seriously answer that question.

I want to be a journalist. I want to be an educator. I want to be an activist.

I want to do all three and I want to work for myself. I want to have ownership and control over all of the creative ideas I am able to think of over my lifetime, however irrelevant some of those ideas may end up being.

Now why all three? Well, I want to write. I want to talk to people. I want to create genuine relationships with individuals. I want to help people. I want to teach people. I want to be taught. I want to spread awareness. I want to be made aware. I want to make a career out of all these things.

Now, how do we connect these two?

Well I guess it goes back to wanting to have ownership over my ideas, my thoughts, my dreams and also maintaining creative control over these three while also creating opportunities for others to do so. I mean, yes, I can always get a degree in journalism and get a job writing for somebody else OR I can get a job teaching something somebody else wants me to teach OR get a job spreading awareness about something somebody else wants me to spread awareness about, and I'm not trying to criticize anybody who does any of these things, but I want OWNERSHIP and CONTROL.

How do you retain ownership and control in this era? I believe you have to create a product, you have to brand it, and you have to put in the footwork for that product and the brand to succeed, every step of the way.

That leads to the magazine right? Well, kind of, sort of. I don't have all the knowledge in the world to make my dreams happen right now, but I feel like that magazine is a step in the right direction. I want to help people through my writing while also creating a product and a brand. Now I just have to figure out how to make it happen.

OCCUPY THE BLOGOSHPERE

"The weight of the world is heavy on my mind, foggy thick, heavy as bricks.

The way that I feel, it's gotta be our time 'cause all of this, it can't persist."

Looking back on the Occupy movement, it's really hard for me to believe that the shit was all going down almost three years ago now. It seems like it was just yesterday that a real revolution was on the verge of happening.

I had been married for only about two months and me and my wife were expecting our first daughter, so needless to say, I was going through some serious transition in my life. I was made aware of the Occupy Wall Street movement by my older brother and a friend of mine who was living in Tennessee. Those two conspiracy theorists really got me thinking about this one...

I've always been one that was down for a social movement, social change and really just being a little shitheaded rebel. But this was different. It wasn't about being latino, polynesian, black, white, gay, straight, urban, suburban, country or whatever other classification you want to use to separate people, it was about the 99% and that includes a shit load of people.

On October 18, 2011 I made this post on Facebook:

"I'm not a controversial person. I don't like to force my beliefs onto anyone. I don't like to talk about certain issues when another person feels uncomfortable about it. I do believe in certain things others don't. I do believe in some "conspiracy" theories, if you want to call them that. I don't believe in the "wars" this country chooses to fight. Not only the wars in the Middle East but also the "war on drugs" or "war on terrorism". But I do support the men and women who serve the country, and do so to protect the people of their country. I respect them.

This #occupy movement is not about any of those things. Don't be fooled by what the media tells you. Don't brush protestors off as homeless hippies or conspiracy theorists or anarchists. Don't ignore this. It will not go away. This #occupy thing effects everyone in the 99%. Everyone leads different lives. Some may be better off than others. But that doesn't mean it doesn't effect you. I have a comfortable job, make good money, my family are working class people who have done well for themselves. My parents came from different countries and provided me and my brother with a good life. I want to take what they've done for me and do better for my kids. I want better for my child, my children, my nephews, my nieces, my younger cousins, myself. But in order for that to happen, things need to change. 

We need hospitals, schools, (as much as I dislike them) police, firefighters, libraries, after school programs, sports and music in school, jobs, health care, OPPORTUNITIES. We need tuition and fees for college lowered or more financial help for people trying to better their "situation" but with that, as a society, we need to not "screw" the system over if its willing to help us. We need the working class taxes lowered and we need to tax the "super rich". The "American Dream" is being lost for all of us. There are multiple events over the last few decades that have increased the wealth and power of the "super rich" (1%) and decreased the oppurtunities for everyone else (99%). 

Be aware. Be smart. Be honest with yourselves. Treat people right. Support Occupy Together. #OccupyWallStreet"

The movement may not have went away, but in some sense it ended.

While watching the videos in class, I was overcome with a healthy amount of anxiety. Where it comes from I'm not exactly sure. I guess it's because I bailed on the movement before it ever really started. I stayed at home with my pregnant wife, watched it happen on TV (at least whatever they showed) and vented on the interwebs. COWARD.

I don't know man. I remember telling my brother that I didn't feel right about leaving a pregnant wife at home while I go and fight for something bigger than any single individual. I guess the movement just wasn't bigger to me than my wife was, than my child was. I'm not really sure what that makes me. 

I asked my brother tonight what his thoughts were about the Occupy movement and he replied "The FBI killed it." I laughed. Fucking conspiracy theorist, right?

But where there's smoke, there's usually fire...

THE FUCKING FBI

I guess at the end of the day, I'm upset.

Upset that I wasn't really a part of it all.

Upset that it died.

Upset that I'm just reflecting on it now.

Upset that the world we know is crumbling.

Upset that I don't know how to help it.

The weight of the world is heavy on my mind...