James Laughlin remembers being 15 when he realized wealthy kids and kids from gang neighborhoods were doing the exact same risky things, but facing opposite futures. That moment showed him life was a game rigged by conditioning, not destiny, and he started choosing his own path instead.
And I'm in the backseat of this kid BMW. They all have 40s and they're smoking weed. I don't smoke weed anymore. But I'm looking at it, at this scenario, and I'm like, this is odd because the kids at my other school, the one that's where the gang activity and the danger and all that stuff, they're doing the same exact thing that these super rich kids are doing. But these kids are going to Yale and these kids are going to jail. And that correlation for me, again, at 15 and a half, I was like. Like, it was like I peered through the veil for a moment and I instantly knew that life was a game and that no one was coming to save me. And this was like another step in me reclaiming my power. Because of all the social and historical programming and conditioning for boys, for black boys, for boys in America, like Christian boys, like all the layers of who I thought I was supposed to be, that was a part of me cutting those cords and then reclaiming who I was in that process.
