One reason I love New York City so much is the random celebrity sightings. You get to see stars in their natural habitat, which to me is a lot more interesting than when you see them at an event/overt stalking. I also have channeling powers, so I tend to meet people at really interesting moments. Enter Russell Simmons.
About a year ago, a friend and I were on our way to a party. We had just exited the Long Island Rail Road and were headed to the liquor store by Penn Station. On the corner I saw a nicely dressed African American man putting a white woman into a cab. I instantly knew it was Russell Simmons.
Usually I have a moment to devise something clever to say, but I didn’t want him to get away so I instructed my friend to get the camera ready and approached. The “conversation” went something like this:
Me: Oh hi Russell, how are you? Can I please have a picture?
Russell: But I look horrible!
Me: No, you look really good, it must be the yoga.
Russell: Y’all are gay right?
Who knows where he was trying to go with that observation, but it was all downhill from there. I remarked how much I loved RocaWear which is only ridiculous because (of course) I know his clothing line is Phatfarm. In fact, one of the nicest pieces of clothing I’ve ever owned was a Phatfarm vest similar to the one he’s wearing. I would always get compliments on it. I was just so nervous (and cheesing it as you can see)…stuttering random thoughts in between smiles.
But he didn’t get upset nor call me out on my mistake and as you can see he posed for some pictures and made small talk for a while. Overall it was one of the nicest celebrity run-ins I’ve ever had.
Seeing Russell was funny for three reasons:
Roughly two month earlier, I had just started a self-evaluation process. I wasn’t happy with my current life path and was trying to see where I went wrong. Part of that process was making a list of mentors, black men specifically, that had “made it” and studying them. Russell was on top of that list.
Funny thing is Russell has always been on my radar: I have a friend who years ago worked for the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) and Russell has always been touted as a success story to the young black/brown kids. However, I never really looked too closely at his career because I don’t really like hip-hop.
Secondly, right before graduation I sent out this very nasty email to my cohort. At that point I was so over it, I was hoping to fuck up someone’s self esteem. We were arguing over sashes for the ceremony (of all things) and I encouraged everyone to celebrate their individualism and wear whatever they wanted. “Do you!” I encouraged them. Ironically enough, that also happens to be the title of Russell’s book.
Weeks before that night, I bough Do You!: 12 Laws to Access the Power in You to Achieve Happiness and Success,
I returned home and furiously started reading. Early on in the book, there were two paragraphs that stood out to me:
On page 13, Russell explains how he runs a multimillion-dollar empire, but he didn’t graduate from college. He then goes on to talk about education in general:
So if I’m knocking anything, it’s not education itself, but more the rigidity that takes over some people once they become educated. The goal is not to become educated and set in your ways but to be educated while staying childlike in your imagination. Because as much as education can teach you what the possibilities are, it can also teach you not to dream.
pg. 28
My birthday had just passed on June 13th…where I turned 28 years old.
BOOM.
His words were so powerful it hit me like a ton of bricks. Although deep down I had known it for a while, the more formal education I was pursuing, the more unhappy I was becoming. In fact, the self evaluation process started when I finally admitted to myself I had a mental breakdown during my time in San Francisco.
Part of this has to do with obligation: my undergraduate honors program was specifically designed to produce more black/brown PhDs in the behavioral sciences. Dr. Tony was supposed to help make the world a better place, especially around HIV/AIDS.
But the truth is academia was slowly killing me. The racism, the homophobia, the elitism, the politics…it was all too much to bear. Why was I busting my ass off to enter a kingdom that clearly didn’t want my kind there?
Russell was right: I stopped dreaming a long time ago. Truth be told the last time I was happy, truly happy professionally, was when I was editor-in-chief of my high school newspaper and we won best in New York State two years in a row.
It was time to find that Anthony again…to resurrect him from the dead. My life and sanity depended on it. Meeting Russell Simmons helped me realize this and for that I am forever grateful.
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