I grew up hating myself and getting bullied. My mom doesn’t want me going outside alone because nothing good happens every time I leave the house by myself. But I told my mom that “I am growing up, I can’t continue to live my life like this. So I went to the park to play basketball and there’s this A court and B court, and on the A court there are these cool kids who bullied me and said, “Get out of here, Loser! Chocolate milk brownie! Get out of here. Go play to the B court. Nobody wants you”. So I went to the B court and started playing. I was a little chubby at the time, I didn’t run really fast. So I shot the ball and hit off the front of the rim and hit off the front of the rim and it started to roll onto the A court. And I knew that if my ball went onto the A court, nothing good would happen. And me being a little chubster, I was breathing heavily while running after that ball and I couldn’t. And it found its way into the hand of a kid named Mike (who was about three or four years older than me), a bully.
He picked up the ball and he kicked it over the fence and it went into the weeds and I screamed “Mike, Mike, Mike, why would you do that? Man, my mom just bought me that ball. Go get it for me, man. Go get it for me.” He turned to me and said, “What are you gonna do if I don’t get it for you?” And I said nothing. I wasn’t trying to get another beat in that day. So I played it off like it was okay. And I was devastated.
Then, I decided to just go to the other park and play on the playground where there are monkey swings. And my heart dropped. It dropped because what I saw was the five bullies who are waiting for me. I started running but still ended beaten up.
I ran home bloodied, and my mother was shocked, she put her hands over her mouth and said “What happened to you, son?” My mother started to cry and said that she’s going to fix this soon. She wants me to transfer to another school and I realized at that moment that sometimes in life, it’s harder for your parents to experience things than it is for you to experience things. Because although the physical scars did hurt me and hurt my parents a lot more. Why, you may ask? Because what hurt me the most were the scars that nobody could see.
And I said, “Mama, no. I’m not going anywhere.” Despite the blood is dripping from me, I’m not going anywhere. They said, “Deven, are you sure? you’ve been asking us for to escape this situation for years? Now you don’t want to go anywhere?” I said, “No, I don’t.“
Sometimes in life, we make decisions not knowing the significance of the decision in the moment, but only recognizing the significance of the decision when you are years later reflecting on that situation. And now I can tell all of you that that was the best decision that I’ve ever made in my life. Why? Let me tell you what I got in eighth grade – I was nominated as the school President by the same exact people who beat me to a pulp that day.
On the other side of the pain is everything you’ve ever imagined.
I could never think in the depths of hell that I was in that moment, that I would have my hand raised by Miss Donahue saying, “Deven is now the President of PS 47!” The same school in which I was beaten up in so many times. And I overcame that situation. And I won, and I was a hero.
There are certain decisions in our lives that we make that shaped who we are that lay the foundation for our lives. And in that moment, I lay the foundation that Deven Justin Rodriguez was not a man that ran away from his problems. I was someone that faced him in the eyes. And if I was going to go through the situation, I was going to make sure that I grew through the situation.
In common hours, stuff will just happen that you will say, “How is this happening? How did this door open? How did this door close.” And yet this beautiful thing happened over here, stuff will not make sense. But Emerson also said that once a man makes a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen for you.
My question for you today is: What do you want to do in life? And who do you want to become?
Because once you get focused on that, the world will shift and make it happen for you. As long as you’re willing to outlast the pain that you’re inevitably going to go through.