5 Life Lessons These Great Soul Singers Taught Me

Do you ever feel like half of your life is being spent on reliving past experiences?

I do.

To dwell in the past is, probably, a bad habit to have, but I can’t help it: a tiny curator in my head likes to play old movies for me. Today he’s playing “Teenage Memories” — my coming of age story. The soundtrack to the film features five women. Confident, unapologetic women with a strong sense of self-worth.

These women taught me some important life lessons when I was going through many turnmoils of adolesence and beyond.

Here are five of them.

1. Your apples are as good as anyone else’s — they’re just different.

“Appletree” by Erykah Badu was the first soul song I’ve ever heard in my life.

It’s not even a song, to be fair. It’s more like an open conversation. A late-night dinner by a fireplace spent with a couple of close friends, where you share and receive apples from each other.

Pre-“Appletree”, I tended to think that people turn away from me because I’m not good enough for them — because I’m basic, single-layered, boring.

Post-“Appletree”, I changed. I guess I needed someone like Erykah to tell me that my apples are as good as anyone else’s — they’re just different.

Embrace your own appletree. Let your blossom shine through.

And if you don’t want to be down with me

Then you don’t want to pick from my apple tree

2. A relationship is a long walk — it’s better to take it with someone who can hold a conversation.

Long walks. Those are important. They can change the course of one’s life dramatically — for better or for worse.

Maybe it’s fabulously romantic and unattainable, but I wish we all had more long walks like the one Jill Scott is having in “A Long Walk”.

How to achieve that?

It’s simple.

A long walk is all about communication, mutual respect and passion.

So before you take one, keep in mind these two things:

1. Don’t waste your time on a person when there is “no spot for both of you to spark”.

2. Don’t waste your time when there is no “conversation, verbal elation, stimulation” between you.

3. You deserve the best — not the runner up.

Ray BLK is right.

We do all deserve the best, and you should never settle for less — but sometimes it’s so tempting, isn’t it?

Less is always easier than more.

Less is faster, cheaper and more accessible.

Yes, less is tempting, but by choosing less you will be, ironically, getting less.

Less joy. Less self-appreciation. Less experience. Less happiness. Less love. Less life. You’ll be less like you and more like everyone else.

Let yourself choose more, and remember, being an empress is not about inheriting the title — it’s about having inner confidence to seize it.

I don’t want to settle for less

’Cause I’m an empress

I need the best

Not the runner up

’Cause that’s what I deserve

4. Sometimes the best thing you can do is to be like water to oil.

Many things have already been said in music, in poetry, in literature.

Do you ever wonder if there’s anything left in the cosmic pool of creativity?

Sometimes I feel there’s very little — until someone proves me wrong. I don’t mind being wrong when it’s Jamila Woods who is spilling the truth. Her latest album “Legacy! Legacy!” is the spring of many pearls of wisdom but this one stuck with me the most:

Come and listen to a quick confession

Water is to oil, me to your agression

So many people today choose hate as a default way of communication — sometimes it’s futile to fight them back. Instead, be more like water, and let them be like oil — let them float on the surface.

5. People aren’t just their hair and skin — it’s a good idea to look beyond that

Our skin, our face, our hair, our eyes, our body, our height — these things have very little to do with our personality, or with our soul, but we still make assumptions, or worse discriminate, based on the way other people look.

All of these years of evolution and we’re still hostages of groundless bias in which white is better than black; rich is better than poor; young is better than old; masculine is better than feminine; straight is better than queer.

We can be better. We must look beyond the skin of each other.

Hopefully, in the future, India. Arie’s “I Am Not My Hair” will be more like a history lesson, and not the reflection of an urgent social problem.

I am not my hair

I am not this skin

I am a soul that lives within

Previously published here.