Mikey's Musings

Redemption Songs

For the past two weeks I think I've heard Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" about 20 times - on the radio, on the streets, in a house, and on a tv commercial. It's almost as if it's a song of hope for people in the ghetto, a hope to get out and live a better life. Or maybe it's their theme song for Barack Obama in bringing his promised "change."

This song has actually been an appropriate song to reflect on since I've recently been knocking in some lower middle-class homes. I look at these people and feel sorry for many of them. The ghetto life is the only life these people know. It seems that a blanket of apathy has covered the minds of many individuals out here. For many, drugs have been a main influence. For others, they simply don't know any other way. The other day we passed by a large area of Section 8 housing - the "Projects." Many people just sat on their porches, in their own poverty. But it wasn't the poverty that struck me. It was the lack of motivation; the lack of growth and progress among these people.

I wondered what would cause such apathy in an individual. Is it past failures that finally broke them down? Is it the feeling that they are so far down in the hole that it seems futile to climb out of the rut? Or is it simply perpetual from previous generations; that they've grown up in such an environment, they don't know any other life; they were born into this, and it's normal to them and they are fine with it, why would they need to go anywhere else and do anything different? Or do they simply have no opportunity?


Fortunately, in several homes I've been in, their children are graduating high school and going off to college for a higher education. I make sure to tell them my high opinion of going to college and getting a degree. Perhaps the parents feel that it's too late for them; however, much hope lies in the future of their children. Opportunity is out there.

In Bob Marley's song, there is a line that goes "Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our mind." Too many people do not realize that much (if not all) of their current situations is due to their agency - their ability to choose for themselves. When all is said and done, it all comes down to choice. Too often, we wait around for someone else to come around and make the change for us, when in reality no one else will do that. It's up to us.

Perhaps that is the "mental slavery" Bob Marley speaks of: not realizing that we have a choice; that the power is within us to make the change. And until that occurs, we cannot sing those redemption songs.