One very popular topic among segments of Black men is traveling abroad for both short-term excursions and permanent relocations. Much of the conversation revolves around the premise that life in a foreign land outside of the United States can offer brothers a much more engaging lifestyle largely due to having greater access to femininity within parts of the world where the women are groomed to respect men much more than in the States and also giving consideration to other factors such as the U.S. dollar stretching further due to lower costs of living, a cultural change of pace – along with a different scenery in general among other factors. 

Now I want to preface the remainder of this piece by addressing those ideas first.  Firstly, I want to establish that this will not be about discouraging Black men from traveling to other parts of the world for those reasons or for any other reasons.  I know that I absolutely have plans to visit different areas of the world for extended stays and have also given consideration to alternate and/or permanent residency in other parts of the world as I’m sure many of you have as well. 

I also believe that a Black man with a reliable income, few lifestyle restrictions and a passport can make the world his oyster and there is a grand world out there for all of us to see.

I am a man who pays much attention to the mentality of Black men.  I’m big on philosophy, personal perspective and one’s general attitude about the topics that I bring attention to and this topic will also be a reflection of that.  

Now for my entire life as of this writing, I’ve been living in Buffalo, NY a city that is not often heralded by many outside of the one’s from here. It’s a forget city of sorts.  If you’re not from here you may think of cold snowy winters, Buffalo Bills Superbowl losses in the 90’s and chicken wings.  Buffalo is considered a rust belt city – which are cities that took a nose dive economically once their was a sharp decline is industrial jobs after employers left the area, leaving a void for both skilled and unskilled workers in manufacturing mostly during the 70’s and has since been doing an uphill climb to reestablish itself as a once thriving metropolis.

Since at least since Junior High, I can recall classmates regularly talking about how they couldn’t wait to graduate from high school so that they could move out of Buffalo.  As I’ve gotten older, the conversations still continue, even now well into my adulthood and the relocation incentives that many people whom I grew up with are largely for the same reasons that they had just after leaving high school which are usually: better weather, more job opportunities, a better nightlife, and a better, broader singles scene.  Perhaps wherever you live, these are also very common discussions as well.   

What’s interesting is that no matter the city that one lives in, it seems as though the people who have resided there for a long time or grew up there usually talk about leaving for the same exact reasons.   

I knew a group of peers who lived in New York City that I briefly associated with when I was around 18 or 19 and on one visit to New York City, they were discussing how there’s nothing to do in the Big Apple.  The said that all they do is go places to eat, hang out with friends, drink and try to meet females.  Now we’re talking about New York City, a place where people all over the world break their neck to arrive with the conviction that if they can just get there, than every opportunity will be available at their fingertips if they apply a hard work ethic and network with the right people.   

But of course we know that when a person has been used to one particular environment for their entire life, it’s easy to want to remove themselves from that environment because of one too many negative experiences.  So no matter where you live, sometimes it’s simply a matter of wanting to get away from the environment that you have come up in, because you run into the same people form the neighborhood that you may have had problems with over the years or the same people from school who remember you in an unfavorable light, or you run into the same peers from the place of worship that you used to be a apart of who still live by the same beliefs or you see the same females at the clubs, you see the same type of businesses open up shop and close, you have the same opportunities for recreation year after year and so on and so forth. So the mentality is that one needs to disassociate oneself from what they have become accustomed to, sometimes to see if the grass is greener elsewhere and other times to simply start anew.   

I notice this particularly with females.  Where I live, several women go down south and move to cities like Atlanta and Charlotte looking for a clean slate or a new scene. Usually they leave for a few months and then come back to visit as if they have been deployed in the middle east for a tour of duty and they’re coming back to rejoin family and friends whom they haven’t been in contact with in ages.  They’ll often post all over social media how they’re back in town and going to eat at all the places that they used to love eating at, and hanging at all of the spots that they used to love hanging out at. After awhile, the majority of them end up moving back home to Buffalo. When they do move back they often cite complaints about the new city that they moved to such as: the people are weird or mean, it’s too expensive, it’s too hot, the job market is too competitive among a host of other complaints.

What these people don’t realize is that their life is likely not going to go good no matter where they live and this is for two main reasons: 1 they still haven’t adjusted their attitudes that have lead to them not opening their eyes to the treasures that were already around them 2 they’re relying on a location to provide for them the joy that they want to experience in life.   

So how do you go about finding treasure on your own backyard?  I believe that virtually all changes that we make starts with adjusting our point of view.

Sometimes I go to City Hall in Buffalo and I go to what’s known as the Observation Deck.  When you enter the building, you take a set of elevators up to the 25^th floor, then you get off and you walk up about 3 flights of stairs and walk into a small looking chamber of sorts and when you enter you can walk onto the balcony of City Hall and from this deck you get a panoramic view of the city of Buffalo. You see over into Canada as Buffalo is on the Canadian border and you get a nice view of Lake Erie.  And when I go to the observation deck, I look out and notice so many familiar sightings, but I see them differently from the deck. 

I see from afar the rooftops of the houses in the area that I grew up and now it doesn’t look like an grim ghetto but rather, I see the sleeping spirit of a neighborhood housing industrious people trying to make a way for themselves with what they have.  I see the people walking around, where they normally look as though they’re in a hurry or disinterested in passerby’s or just in their own zone, some who look like they’re up to no good; now I see them in slower motion from up top looking like they’re not as sure of themselves as they present themselves to be.  From this view, They look like they would welcome with open arms someone who entered their lives to help them find more directions. I see the buildings of major employers that house workers who were so grateful to get that call back for the second interview so that they can sustain themselves with a modest wage and from this view, these employers don’t look that powerful. They now look like the result of a group of people pooling their money believing that they could make a fortune if they set up shop and they set up shop.     

And when I leave the observation deck and walk down those three flight and return back to the elevator going back to ground level and walk out of City Hall, the energy changes – the vibe changes.  There is a different pulse now.  

I grew up on the east side of Buffalo – the stereotypical inner-city hood and until around age 30, I had only lived in the hood. If you’ve lived in the inner-city for most of your life and you’ve gotten older, I’m sure many of you brothers have acknowledged, that there simply is a noticeable difference in quality of life when you move out the hood.  We can love our people as a group all we want, but the 5-10% of us that cause 80% of the chaos certainly contribute towards an environment of life being much more troublesome than it has to be. 

I didn’t truly realize how much I could use a break from living among impoverished surroundings and those stricken with poverty states of mind until I had been living on the other side of town for a couple of months and since I had moved, so did my travel routine as to where I shopped for groceries, did my laundry, went to out to eat and hang out etc. I tended to just utilize what was near me, so I really didn’t have a reason to be back in the hood that much unless I was going for a purpose. One Summer afternoon I was approaching Main St. which separates two sides of town where literally on one side of the street you have homes that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars and on the other side of the street you might be fortunate to sell a comparable sized home the house for $50,000.  And on the other side of the street was what I was used to. As I stood on that corner to go back on the east side to grab a bite tow eat, I realized that I didn’t want to cross the street.  When I looked across the street I saw crackheads and drunks, young Black men being disrespectful to people in the general public, loud mouthed young women about to fight, lurkers looking like they’re ready to rob somebody – just looking on the other side of the street triggered in my mind a defeated vibe. It wasn’t a fear of any sort because this is how I grew up always being on alert, always walking around paranoid, watching body language, listening to what’s said, listening to what’s not said just being street smart and constantly having my antenna up. I noticed as I stood there that I just enjoyed being able to relax my mind just a bit knowing that I didn’t have to live their anymore. 

Now of course, this isn’t to say that things don’t happen in other more affluent neighborhoods, but the familiar experiences are what contributes towards our perspectives many times. Broadening or changing your experiences may be part of the things that you need to find the treasure in your own backyard. 

Sometimes it simply means moving to the other side of town.  If you’re disgruntled with the jobs that you’ve had and think that your talents haven’t been put to better use where you can walk into work with a sense of pride and dignity about exchanging your time for money, sometimes it’s not the work itself that you can’s stand, but rather the work environment.  Perhaps having a different experience with a much more professional employer, where your ideas can be utilized or at least considered more, where there a more productive and efficient systems in place can be just the change that you’re looking for to get you out of bed anxious to put your best foot forward.    

Like most things in life when we are seeking to experience change I believe that we should ask ourselves what are we really looking to attain.  And I believe that a major part of being enterprising as men is to look at the general theme that we want to create for our daily experiences and working our way backwards with the materials that we have while expanding our options. 

Sometimes we need to take a step back, look at what we have and look at what can do to make life much better and go on a hunt for those things within our territory.  This helps us to live with a more enhanced state of appreciation for what we have and also to exercise the innovative approach to life where we realize that opportunity often comes as a result of progressing towards worthwhile ideals by way of working under the circumstances that we’re in.    

Now this doesn’t mean cheapening our experiences so to speak by not exploring all of the magnificence that life has to offer us. Your trip to Chinatown is not meant to replace a trip to Hong Kong. But it does mean that you can look at the opportunity in front of you to learn much more about Chinese culture with what’s available to you.  So one of our skills as men of enterprise is to make the best of what is already around us – we’re like cooks who need to come up with a satisfying and nutritious meal that hits the spot with a few miscellaneous items available in our refrigerator and cabinets that don’t look like they fit any particular recipe and yet we can make a signature dish Make things work in your favor while moving towards areas and outcomes that are idealistic. 

One thing that you can do is to make it a regular practice to experience some of the best things that life has to offer where you live.  You can do this by seeking out the highest quality in the way of services, environments and goods that are available where you live.  Make it a point to give yourself the V.I.P. treatment in your own locale by getting acquainted with the “Best Of” what is around you.

As Black men, often times we’re accustomed to simply getting by, to simply use the most economical approach to everything, instead of investing into long-term rewarding experiences because we’re always just trying to survive by the small window of time that we can realistically envision which is usually just a few jumps ahead of us.   

Do you Remember the Cash for Clunkers initiative in 2009 when Obama was in office? As part of the stimulus during that recession, automakers and car customers were to help one hand to wash the other.  The drivers could trade in their eligible vehicles which were often times old worn out rides for a newer, safer, more fuel efficient new car and people got vouchers towards the new car purchase at a deeper discount than before and this program was to also help automakers boost sales as well.

Prior to this initiative, the overwhelming majority motto when it came to cars among Black men in my area was to get a car for about $1500 or so, do a tune-up on it, make sure that you could pass inspection with no check engine lights and cross your fingers that it’ll last you a year and if it breaks down after that just junk it because the major repairs wouldn’t be worth it and get another one.

And this mentality: Just do enough to get by – reflects itself in so many areas of Black men’s lives. So many of us have been participating in life from the nosebleeds. 

I went to Toronto to see The Phantom of the Opera on a field trip in 6th grade. My mother was one of the parental chaperones and she paid a premium to get me, her and my younger closer seats in the orchestra section. The standard seats that my classmates were in were several rows behind. During the Phantom of the Opera play, I was able to see in rich detail the faces of cast, the orchestra setting up their instruments during transition of each act, and the part of the play where the chandelier comes down swinging happened right over our heads! That part was very exciting for me and my brother to experience. I remember afterwards, we went to eat spaghetti as a group and my classmates were fawning over how cool it was that I sat so close to the stage. I remember riding back to school on the bus with my class, my brother and my mom and feeling so sophisticated for partaking in such an entertaining afternoon. Till this day, I still hold going to that play as being the single most enriching entertainment experience of my life. The additional costs for my mom was probably no more than a $20 premium per ticket.

Brothers, you only get so many days on this earth. Do yourself the favor of trying to craft as many rewarding experiences as possible.

Be a tourist where you live.  Ride a bike, dive around, take a long walk.  I like to walk along the railroad tracks in my city, it’s like a world within the seams of the city. Make a project out of where you live and study your surroundings. Find an adventure to go on right where you live. Take advantage of your local educational opportunities through community organizations, community colleges, and continuing education programs. Plan out your social activities a couple of weeks in advanced to give yourself something to look forward to by finally checking out the restaurant that you always thought was too expensive. Get a routine of your favorite places to go and your favorite things to do to keep yourself satisfied in your leisure time. Discover something different as well, those local papers that focus on arts and entertainment are a good place to explore.

Take pride in knowing the best places to go eat, the best places to chill and, the best spots for the arts, to shop to dine, to go for a walk, to get a coffee, to people watch, to relax, to meet ladies.  Get the most of what is available right where you are. Nobody should be able to come to where you have been living for all of your life and know more about what’s happening than you do. You have the advantage of knowing the pulse of where you live more than outsiders. Shake the hands that you haven’t yet but that you know that you should. You’d be surprised of the variety of people and connections that you can make when you take a few days off from work during the day to get into the local business, political and social circles in your community. If you live in a place where you wish certain things existed, you could be the one to establish it, just like someone established everything else in this world.

I call to mind Seneca, a Stoic philosopher who once said: “Nothing, is a better proof of a well ordered mind than a man’s ability to stop just where he is and pass some time in his own company.” 

And that’s what it really going to come down to brothers.   

What if you go to another place for a better life and everything that you were expecting and anticipating is just the opposite?  What if you discover that the women aren’t who you heard that they were? What if there’s a downpour of rain all vacation long limiting your experiences? You must still find a way to be successful with your desires by being opportunistic with what you already have while en route to other discoveries that await us world wide.

If we’re in downtown Tokyo or Cincinnati, whether you’re on a beach in Santorini, Greece or in Baton Rogue, we have to take control of the circumstances in our life by taking care of the environment within our own minds by being comfortable in our own skin no matter where we are, because it’s indeed the only real permanent residency that we will ever have. 

Written By: Waymon Brown. Creator of theesquireproject.com. Email info@theesquireproject.com