Punching Up
When I was eight my family and I lived in government housing in “The Goldingham Houses” a housing development smack dab in the middle of an industrial city. It was built for low to medium income working class families commuting into London for labor jobs. “The Estates” as we affectionately called it, was 3x3 square blocks and divided into five sub hoods, each with their own crew of kids that ran that area. At its center was “The Community Hall” which represented the heart of the neighborhood. This is the place everyone would come together to celebrate, settle beefs, negotiate partnerships, throw parties, etc. Even though it was a tough working class neighborhood, we were like a big family. Everyone knew each other, and for the most part we looked out for each other, but as with all things there were politics and ego.
There was one particular family in The Estates, the Colburns, that boasted seven brothers, all who could fight. I mean they were all really good with their hands, all except for the youngest brother Johnny who benefited from the assumption that he could also fight but had never been tested. The prowess his older brothers demonstrated to earn their rep left you with no reason but to believe this. This impacted the ecosystem of the hood in a few ways. For starters, Johnny was the loudest of all of the brothers and took advantage of the fear many had of his brothers to order people around and act like a tyrant. Because he was the youngest he didn’t have wisdom, so he became the genesis for all kinds of stupidity. He was a bully, and he rolled with a crew of bullies. This seems to be a hallmark of unearned privilege. When you didn’t have to go to war to earn the power, you may use it without the proper respect for what it took to earn it. That was Johnny in a damn nutshell, but we all know people like this.
My saving grace was my older brother, Paul, who himself had a rep as the one person the Colburns respected. Paul could also fight, very well, and on top of that was extremely well liked and popular in the neighborhood because he could dance his ass off and he was known to always dress fresh to death, dripped in the latest fashion (probably some Kappa or Diadora gear). He was the anti Colburn, because they ruled by fear and were unliked universally. I looked up to Paul the most of anyone in the entire world, outside of my momma. Before my mom remarried, Paul, who is 8 years older than me, acted as a father figure. He cooked, picked me up from school, and most importantly took me everywhere with him, even to parties, which is how I learned to dress and work rooms. I just wanted to be overwhelmingly fly like him. Paul was many times my own saving grace from having to fight kids much older than me, but he didn’t spare me when the kids my age wanted to square up. The way we saw it, what’s fair is fair. Defend yourself or get rolled. At this age, I was not yet a fighter, and was more interested in break dancing and riding my bike, but that didn’t matter here, and many times you faced what you didn’t want to in order to learn what you needed to about your nature.
One Friday me and my little crew were at the Hall, and something started popping off out back with a kid in my crew and some kids from Johnny’s crew of friends. I went back there to see what was up and before I knew it, Johnny, knowing who my brother was, stepped to me. You see this was all about power. Johnny had not yet proven himself worthy of the same respect his older brothers had, but he wanted to establish himself. Because of my brother’s reputation, he saw beating me up as a way to assert himself and to earn his own reputation. This was about power. It’s always about power. The power in the reputation of a name can only hide you for so long before you have to do something to establish your own reputation, or you start to become a vulnerability to that name. Johnny knew this. He also knew that I would probably fold out of a mix of an assumption that he is a good fighter and fear that even if I beat him I would have to then fight the next oldest brother, who was standing there with arms folded watching everything transpire. He was right. I folded.
Next thing you know, Johnny, who is much smaller than I am, is on top of me punching me in the face. I’m fighting back but half heartedly, and I’m getting bloodied. All of a sudden Paul comes around the corner, and stops in his tracks. I will never forget the look of absolute disgust on his face, because even though I didn’t like to fight, he knew that I could if I wanted to, because he had trained me himself. He simply said, “If you don’t whoop his ass, Ima whoop you” and that is all that it took for me. I flipped Johnny and turned the tables. Johnny tapped out. The older brother never did test me. That fear was all in my mind.
I learned something about myself and the world in that moment that stuck with me for the rest of my life. First I learned that power isn’t real. It’s perceived, and on top of that it is reinforced by myth. Second, I learned that facing power head on comes with risk, but that allowing it to beat you without a fight means not being able to look at yourself in the same way, and ever since that day I have not ever backed down from a fight. Life is full of risks, but if you don’t run towards them and face them you ultimately do not face yourself. Even if I had lost that fight, I would have been able to go home with my brother’s respect and my own intact. This is why I love startups so much, and especially startups being built by outsiders not from the name brand schools or employers, because they go up against the Colburns and risk having to fight every single brother and getting beat up along the way, but they’ve decided to go anyway.
Someone once told me that courage isn’t a lack of fear, but it is actually the total and full embrace of it, and for people fighting for something bigger than themselves in any area of business or life, I hope this post gives you the added inspiration to fuel your courage.
