Positive
Motion.

The streets are like a river.

Watch the water sometimes. It is beautiful, soothing, and peaceful — the kind of thing that makes you want to dive in. But there are moments when that same river roars, rises, and throws everything in its path. That is the street life: calm in one season, violent in the next, with no warning before it shifts.

Many young people jump into the river because the water looks beautiful. The world of illegal gains moves the same way, convincing you that it is safe to enter. It is the money a drug dealer flashes, the attention a dancer commands on the pole, the luxury car pulling away, or the lifestyle a white-collar hustler builds through connections of inept activities. Nobody dives in chasing prison, infection, injury, betrayal, or death. They chase comfort, attention, financial freedom, and the feeling of having something.

But that old raging river has other plans.

The first stone it throws you against might be addiction, a run-in with the law, or a small conflict that turns every corner into a memory and every face into a possible enemy. Before long, you have become subject to being harmed or forced into a decision that haunts you forever. Now the river is raging. The beauty that caught your eye has disappeared beneath branches, debris, leaves, and filth. What once looked like flowing water reveals itself as something dangerous that was never truly still.

Stay away from the river because it is deceptive.

She looks soothing today and invites you in, but danger may be waiting beneath the surface. What feels calm may be one step from a storm, and the water itself may be polluted by something dumped upstream, something you never saw coming and would never think to test.

These are allegories, yes. Stories built to simplify a truth that is difficult to say plainly. The streets are that river. You rarely know what you are entering, because you do not get the opportunity to investigate every person and circumstance first. You may not know who is working undercover, who is overwhelmed by stress, or who is one bad moment away from becoming your worst nightmare.

And then, one day, the river calms.

It deposits you on its banks, worn and battered, every piece of your turmoil laid out on the shore, and you decide this is the perfect moment to canoe. So you get back in. The river receives you so gently that it rocks you into a deep sleep. The current carries you like a lullaby. You lower your guard. You drift.

Then, without warning, a rock no bigger than your fist catches the hull at just the right angle, flips the canoe sideways, and spills you headfirst into the shallow water between the stones.

And you wake up dead.

Once you jump into that river, it does not brief you on what is downstream. It does not warn you. It takes you wherever the current goes, and your opinion on the destination stops mattering the moment you leave the bank.

That, my friend, is the nature of the streets.

The more good moments you create, the easier your bad days can become, because you have those moments to remember when life gets heavy. This is one way I have survived in the belly of the beast. Enjoy the good times without becoming careless, and prepare yourself to endure the hard ones.

If this book has made you question your life, if it has turned you toward thriving and becoming a better person, then it has done what it was sent to do.

Please share it with your friends, your organization, your religious group, and your family. Post about it on social media and let the world know that you are part of the Positive Motion movement.

Positive Motion is not a slogan. It is a decision. It is waking up every morning and choosing to build rather than repeat the cycle. It is teaching the children around you what no one taught you. It is refusing to let the pattern continue on your watch.

When you pay attention, you don't pay taxes. Ponder that one.