Display of Power – Point of the Week – EVERYTHING & NOTHING

(This post was taken from Daymond;s weekly column on www.urbanworldwireless.com)

EVERYTHING AND NOTHING – At first I was going to write my column on the amazing accomplishments Michael Jackson achieved during his brief life. I was doing this in an effort to educate the younger generation on why Mike was way more than just a singer and the reason the world is so stricken by the loss. Those who seek true power should take time to research and educate themselves on one of the last living legends this generation will ever see. I’m going to take it a bit further and talk about something else. As I try to wrap my mind around how to express in words what we are experiencing with the loss of this complex individual, I begin to understand that Michael was way more important in our lives than we have ever realized.

This man was clearly the most recognizable face on the planet. Mike made us laugh, cry, fall in love, get over heartbreaks, wear weird clothes, get our freak on, and dance the night away! He made us dream of far-away places, he scared us with zombies, made us face the truth about those who are poverty-stricken, tried to save the planet and teach us that race is not black or white. He gave us a peek into an extravagant lifestyle of wealth, set records that other artists will forever attempt to break, created a standard of excellence in performance, showed us the face of unhappiness with the lengths at which a person will go under a knife, and generally made us question the price of fame.

He was the butt of our jokes. He made us question if we should trust our kids with those we admire. He made us value the importance of having a childhood as we witnessed his anguish at having his snatched from him. He was the person at whom we could all point our fingers.

Forget the saying “I want to be like Mike”. When it came to Michael Jackson, it was “I have a piece of Mike!” There are very few people on this planet that don’t have a piece of this man in their lives, whether by picture, song, article of clothing or the way he affected their environment and the music and entertainment they enjoy today. To an entire generation (and to the entire world for many, many years) Michael Jackson was EVERYTHING. And after all of that, once the dust settles, we will go on with our lives as if he was never here. Of course we won’t forget him. The music will live forever. But that feeling we had when he was on top of the world, or that feeling we had at his immeasurable lows – where will those go? At the end of the day, he will just be the songs future generations dance to…or maybe not. How often do we dance to previous generation’s music?

It makes me ask this question: HOW DOES A PERSON WHO MEANS EVERYTHING TO US, ALSO MEAN NOTHING TO US AT THE SAME TIME? Someone summed up on Twitter in very few words how to lump this man’s massive life, achievements, contributions, spirit and affect of it on us in few words (a tweet-sized soundbyte, in fact): “WE ENJOYED MICHAEL’S LIFE MORE THAN HE DID.”