I picked up this Terry Crews book as a gift for my brother.
I saw an interview where he talked about men and how there’s an assault on masculinity which was pretty interesting to me. So, I bought his book Manhood: How to Be a Better Man or Just Live With One thinking that it was a humorous self help type of book and that it would be interesting to read. Out of curiosity, I picked it up and read it. I quickly learned that the book is not a self help one. It’s definitely a memoir of his entire life. Going into reading, I didn’t know much about Terry at all. I know of his acting career (Everybody Hates Chris and of course, White Chicks), his Old Spice commercials, BET reality show and I know he used to play in the NFL.
Terry had this vision for his life. A vision that he was only able to execute with faith. Faith in himself and faith from his wife. Basically, Terry knew that his ticket out of his small town was football he also knew that he was supposed to go to Hollywood and be a star. Of course, this wasn’t an easy journey and he got discouraged often. He battled with perfectionism and struggled to be the perfect person and Christian. He spent a long time in the book blaming everyone else in his life for some of the misfortunes. It wasn’t until he totally acknowledged his own role in the things happening around him and took responsibility for those things, that he was truly elevated to another level. That next level gave him the awareness needed to succeed.
I used to think that with age came wisdom, but that’s not always true. I started to look at some of the adults in my life and quickly realized that growing older and maturation aren’t correlated. I also started looking at my dating experiences which also confirmed that age has absolutely nothing to do with maturity. Wisdom comes to those of us who seek it out. Those of us who learn from the mistakes we made in the past and apply those discoveries to our future. How many times do we do things we know who shouldn’t do expecting a different result than before? Too often, right? For the longest time I used to only read fiction books, but I feel like reading another person’s real life story is so much more impactful. It reinforces this truth that we are not alone in what we are experiencing.
