Been having a few reflective conversations in the last couple of months with various homies on a variety of topics. I noticed this first started after the pandemic hit cause kicking in person became an intentional process. We are all going through something incredibly farfetched but intensely real at the same time, conversations just kept getting heavier and heavier as time flew by. It's only now that our conversations have started gravitating toward less intense topics and random bullshit that we use to laugh about. Just cause I am not sharing here doesn't mean I haven't stopped reflecting inwardly either. That compulsive feeling to write via a stream of consciousness and publish it on the internet has thankfully faded away.
Still, I've been hanging onto something that I first verbalized when I was kinking it with the homie from Anaheim. The conversation touched on work has been unavoidable in our lives, even at a young age, and the different motivations behind wanting/needing to work. Often times our conversations will casually touch on some of the social norms that were instilled in us as Mexican men that grew up undocumented in this country. Our lives couldn't be any more different, but theirs is a friendship I've valued for years. We got to talking about how growing up, we were both told by our parents, like so many others, to get an education so we don't have to work as hard as they do. That's why they brought us to this country.