Rediscovering Your Lost Dreams

By David R Smith

We are all capable of more than we are offering the people around us. We need to rediscover our hopes and dreams that are all but lost. In, Rediscovering Your Lost Dreams, David will help you find the spirit that drives your passion for life and show you how you can accomplish what seems to be impossible right now.

David draws on the principles that have helped him during his years in athletics and in entertainment to guide the reader down a path towards their own desired outcomes. Filled with humorous stories and anecdotes, you will be sure to have fun along the journey to rediscovering your own lost dreams.

It’s never too late begin that journey. Are you ready?

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jan 21, 2014
• ISBN: 9780993617904

David R Smith

David R. Smith is a 15-year youth ministry veteran who helps youth workers and parents through his writing, training, and speaking. David specializes in sharing the gospel, and equipping others do the same. He provides free resources to anyone who works with teenagers on his website, DavidRSmith.org.

Book preview

Falllin

WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER 99%?

Professional athletes in the major North American sporting leagues represent the top 1% of athletes in their particular sport. Meaning that in the NBA, those players represent the top 1% of basketball players globally. The same holds true for the NFL and MLB. We have a scenario where millions of kids grow up wanting to be a pro basketball player, or pro baseball player, or football player. Statistics show that only 1% of those kids, with the dream, will actually make it to play at the professional level.

The same holds true for the music industry and namely hip hop. The artists we see in the mainstream, whether it be: Jay Z, Kanye West, Eminem or 50 Cent, represent that top 1% of the rappers who are trying to make it to the top spot globally. And that’s why it’s so funny to me when you look at how people perceive rappers in general in the media.

How can you possibly base a stereotype on rappers when only 1% of the people in that genre are represented by what we see on TV? And that’s not to say that other hip hop fans don’t follow the trends, or anything, but still. We’re talking about a very small number of people who are up at that level where they have the marketing dollars and the platform to garner the amount of exposure they have. But you hear the talk in the media, or in regular day-to-day talk about how rappers are all disrespectful to women and only care about superficial things.

But then we did the same with Muslims after 911, didn’t we? After that attack, we took that less than 1% and stuck the terrorist or extremist label on every single Muslim throughout the world. A slight stereotype to say the least: 911changed the way we look at a religion, in terms of Muslims. And God forbid if you have a last name that seems Muslim; then you are definitely going to get randomly searched. This goes back to the idea of 1% of a people being the poster, if you will, for a religion that numbers around 1.6 billion people.

Getting back to the idea of the hip hop industry, for the thousands of hip hop artists globally, it’s crazy to think that the 1% we see on TV, and hear on the radio, are all the hip hop music and artists are judged by.

I’ve never come remotely close to living the lifestyle that Jay Z has.

AND IT GOES A LITTLE SOMETHING LIKE THIS…HIT IT!!

I was born in London, Ontario but did most of my growing up in Kitchener, Ontario, where we were what you would call trend followers. We knew what was hot through our media outlets, TV, radio and magazines. We weren’t a city that created the trends the media hyped like New York, or Los Angeles, or even Toronto, which is an hour east of where I grew up.

In fact, one of the things Kitchener was and is known for is Oktoberfest. We had a large German population, Kitchener was originally known as Berlin, and our Oktoberfest celebration to this day is still one of the largest in the world. But for me, I never had any interest in it. Besides, as a kid the last thing on my mind was getting into a beer tent or doing the polka and the chicken dance.

I lived in the suburbs in a comfortable back split home on Timberlane Crescent. Across the street from my house there was a huge park where we’d play baseball all summer long. There was this playground in the centre with sand, swings and slides. I remember, as kids, we’d try digging down as far as we could through the sand until we got to the clay. Our goal was to dig all the way down to China, since somehow we knew China was on the other side of the world. In the wintertime they’d flood the park and turn it into an ice rink and we’d play. Actually, I remember in the winters after the snow fell, the snow would get packed down on the street and you could actually skate on the street itself. We were five minutes away from a small forest with a pond. The pond would freeze over in the winter and we’d skate on that too. Spring and summer we were catching frogs, snakes and salamanders and building make-shift forts.

We’d break off branches and pretend they were guns and we’d be in the forest all day playing war. I had a great group of friends to run around and get into trouble with. The neighbourhood was packed with kids my age.

I didn’t hang out with my brother Gregory or anything. He was ten years older than me; so we were worlds apart. His friends were the coolest people on earth as far as I was concerned. Their style of dress was always current; all of them could drive and had fresh Jerry curls that always looked wet. If you’re familiar with the styles of the 80’s, then you know a dried out Jerry curl just wasn’t cutting it. Our house wasn’t originally the hang out spot for my brother and his crew, but my dad had bought a pool table, so my brother’s friends came around more often. I didn’t know a thing about pool but I felt like I was a kid off of a TV show or something. I was young, but I learned to bang a pool ball around a table pretty well, and to this day, I’m still pretty good on the table. Beware if you ever want to try me. Being the young brother, it was always cool for me to catch a glimpse of them hanging out.

I grew up in a much different neighbourhood than 50 Cent. I had my own experiences, which makes my music uniquely me. For me, my introduction to hip hop has its own unique journey as it does for everyone else. It was 1985, and I had just come home from school for the day. I heard music bumping in the basement where my older brother and his friends were practising their break dance routine. My young curiosity led me to go down and check out what they were up to.

This day in particular was about to change my life. My brother and his friends had no interest in the pool table that day as they were focused on working on their breakdance routine. They were called the Suicide Breakers, one of the top crews in the city, and believe me they were sick. I remember one day doing the worm in front of them, hoping that this one move would be good enough for them to consider me to be part of the crew. They were amused, but that was about it, I just didn’t make the cut.

The day wasn’t about the worm or any of that, it was about the music coming out of the speakers that led me to the top of the stairs and held me captivated, paralyzed almost. It was Just-Ice rapping through the speakers of the boom box, rapping a song I would later learn was called, Latoya. The song was real raw, just his vocals over a cat named DMX beatboxing (not the DMX we’re now familiar with). It held me spellbound. My world stopped. It was this fresh experience that affected me in a way that I can’t describe.

Prior to this life-altering day, I would have wanted to backspin to the music, but for some reason at that moment I wanted to perform it. I mean we had a TV, so we had access to Michael Jackson and his music videos. My dad, he was definitely a music lover, so he had a ton of albums and tapes, we even had one of those floor model TV’s with an eight-track player in it. For some reason, none of what he had in his collection moved me the way Just-Ice did that afternoon. What made the song even cooler was how he swore in the song.

You see, I grew up in a Christian home, church every Sunday and Wednesday, whether I wanted to go or not. My brother was at the age where he didn’t necessarily have to go anymore. But I was cool with it, because I had another group of friends that I would meet up with when I was at church. We’d only see each other on Sundays and Wednesdays. My church didn’t have a preacher, each Sunday the men would take a turn preaching the sermon. I dug that, because you’d get to hear different perspectives on parables and I found I’d have my favourites that would preach. I liked Bill Lane. He dressed like Johnny Cash and his favourite food was Kentucky Fried Chicken. When he preached it was just real, it wasn’t really ‘sermonized’.

My dad was great at preaching as well, he was passionate about what he talked about in his sermons. You could see that he internalized his teachings. Actually, for a little while, he taught the teen bible class, and one of our assignments was to put together a five-minute sermon and then present it to the congregation. I think it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me. Because since it was my dad teaching, of course I had to bring it, and also part of me wanted to show him how well I could do. I think I’ve always had a history of proving myself. When it was time to present, I did a great job and was proud of it. He didn’t say too much about it, but I knew he was proud of me though. Having the experience as a young kid to get up and speak in front of people shattered any fear I had of public speaking. I was a natural performer, so I didn’t have trouble being in front of a crowd. But to be in front of a crowd and speak on a serious topic and hold their attention, that’s a different story. My comfort for public speaking began there and then. So to have this type of church