Picture
Being from a city like New Orleans gives you no choice but to learn, early, how to make a dollar out of fifteen cents. Hustle is not an option in our city, it's a lifestyle. Even the wealthy of New Orleans are full of passion and fire for whatever it is that's keeping food on their table. It's a city that teaches and ,more importantly, allows you to "love the life you live and live the life you love".  It takes nothing more than an idea to make enough money to live here. With the luxury of tropical weather and year round planting, it takes nothing more than the will to work the thick clay soil to grown some of the best fruits and vegetables you'll ever taste. It is a city of entrepreneurs, artists, independents, chefs, bakers, movers and shakers. Mostly self taught and heavily learned in the school of hard knocks. But at the end of the day it's still "laissez le bon temps rouler". I mean, a short walk through the French quarters and you'll count at least ten painters, silver-painted men posing as statues, clowns twisting balloons, street musicians, food vendors, street dancers, the list could go on and on. This city doesn't teach us what impossible means...we learn to be limitless. We learn that if we keep moving, eventually "sum'n gon' shake". 

Yes, for every thing there is an equal and opposite. When the poverty level in this city was exposed it became the shame of the entire nation (see Katrina). But in a city as free hearted and generous as New Orleans, poverty can be seen as a choice and a mind set. Chosen by those who let what their eyes could see determine what their outcome would be. Excuses fall short here. The fittest always survive here. Every week I see a brother in a wheelchair passing the hat with the brass band, gyrating his shoulders and "second linin" right from his chair, earning his keep. Children as young as five glue bottle tops and tin can lids to their tennis shoes [sneakers] and tap dance on the curb for money. And no, the cops don't stop 'em.

Everybody understands the hustle in New Orleans. From the top brass politicians to the bum on the corner singing his heart out for a beer.  I'm so grateful for all that this city has taught me about getting up and getting it. I'm thankful to be from a place where self employment is an everyday way of life; acceptable and encouraged through the entire population....and easy as a pot of beans. I'm glad to be at home in the space of getting it on my own. Slow motion is better than no motion when you're from the Big Easy.

There's no place like it on earth ;)

#ThankfulThursday #NolaNspiyahd




Leave a Reply.