This morning I came accross the same homeless couple from last week, the ones walking in no clear direction.  Well today they had ditched the shopping cart and where pulling a pair of suitcases in the same direction as last Thursday.  For some reason they still looked lost.

Don’t be lost…take control of your life!

Yesterday morning I was walking north bound on Market Street in downtown San Francisco. I had stayed the night over at the Palomar Hotel on 4th and Market and I was head towards work at 101 California St. As I was walking I came across a homeless couple walking in the opposite direction, “were where they going” I thought to myself. Life was dictating my direction on this sunny San Francisco morning and it seemed that life was also dictating this couple to wander aimlessly. This is where I started to think that most people allow life to dictate their direction (romantics call it destine), yet we have the power to change that and it seems that people forget how powerful humans really are. Matt and I are looked at and judged by others for our nomadic lifestyle and people cannot comprehend why we decide from one day to the next to just quite our jobs and move to another city without a job, without a house, and without knowing anyone. Yet I think that we are the only ones that are making a conscious choose to dictate our direction to create our own destinies. On a daily bases life does tell us which direction to walk in, in fact yesterday morning I would have preferred to walk south towards the beach instead of north towards work, but I have decided to be a productive member of society so I have a job and responsibilities.

We both love our families and our friends that we have back in our hometowns, but we also love to meet new people, explore different cultures, be stimulated by new things. The world is so large and it has so much to offer that it’s a crime to stay in one place your entire life. Life is there for you to do with it as you please, be whom you want, when you want, and where you want it. To see people at least in the U.S. strapped to their dead end jobs, miserable quality of life, and a sense of hopelessness is beyond Matt and I. Life is not the boss you, you are the boss of your life.

One thing is damn right clear life may dictate which direction I walk in today, but I decide in what city I walk in tomorrow.

What are you letting life decide for you?

I’m not one to tell people what they can and cannot do. Heck if they want to consume drugs go right ahead, go all out for all I care. I’m not against the consumption, people have the god given right to think and to make a choice. I’m against the industry of drugs, the industry that has been created due to the lack of legalization. An industry that is destroying families and entire countries with corruption and death like Mexico and Columbia, this industry is violent, corrupt, and ruthlessly savage.

As some of you know, I grew up in Tijuana, BC and as a child I would play out on the street as late as 11pm during the summer months. It was a quite city back then. Native Tijuanenses are nice hospitable, noble, hardworking Mexicans just as you would have found in other small cities and towns throughout Mexico in the 70’s and even till this day. Yet in the late 80’s there started to be a change not only in Tijuana but in the whole country. DRUGS started to be a big business and a few business people with connections started to see how easy and lucrative this industry was. By the early 90’s Tijuana was not as safe as it was but as long as you did not go looking for trouble you where fine, trouble stayed away. The first time there was a public act of violence the whole city was in shock. In the past people had gotten gun down in front of their homes, on an empty road, or taken to an isolated area and got shot down execution style. Although this time a drug runner pulled out his gun and shot a guy while inside a crowed trendy club in Pueblo Amigo a highly trafficked shopping mall and a place that I frequented just about every weekend during the summer months with my sister Julieta and all my college friends. This was an isolated incident but it scared people enough that the place closed down because people stopped going. Saturday night was suppose to be a day that you hung out with your friends, drink a few wine coolers, and flirted a little with the cute boys, it was defiantly not suppose to be a day where you had to worry but who is carrying a gun. By the late 90’s there where shootings between drug lords and their rival gangs fighting for the control of the market. See Tijuana is the largest port of entry in the world he whom controls Tijuana controls a very large part of the U.S. sales.

In 2000, my family as so many other fortunate families had to relocate to San Diego, CA due to the unsafe and dangerous environment that was on the rise. I say fortunate because so many others are unable to immigrate or relocate and take their families out of harm’s way. They are force to live among the increasing violence and corruption. For my family and I, the scariest part and the breaking point of our move was that we lived right next a drug lord, whose home was a corner house, the same color, the same street number, and he had three daughters…way to close for comfort especially when revenge killers just kidnap, rap, mutilate, and they do not ask for ids. Oops we hit the wrong faee from mily. So my parents packed up their bags, put their home up for rent and over the boarder they went.  A rent sign went up, because we still have hope that that wonderful city that saw my siblings and I grow up into hard working productive members to socity will once again be free one day.  Free from the violance, free from the murders, free as it once was noble and welcoming to all that wanted to call it home.

Now in 2009, people don’t even flinch when they hear gun fire or hear that there was a 3 hour shootout between police and drug gangs. It’s the inevitable truth of the daily thread of life in Tijuana. There are beheadings on a daily bases and the saddest thing is that its only going to get worse before it gets any better. Unless drugs such as marijuana (the major drug being sold and grown from Mexico) becomes legalized. With legalization comes better control, it would be an industry protected by anti monopoly laws. The same thing that happened with the left on the band of alcohol would happen with drugs.

Currently there are towns in Mexico where farmers are forced by the drug cartels to grow marijuana. Farmers are not able to grow corn and beans to feed their families anymore. They are being exploited by the drug cartels and getting paid very little or nothing at all. For others their lands are being taken away and the lucky ones are killed while the others are being put into modern day slavery. All this because it’s an illegal substance and because someone wants to light up. Simple supply and demand, and there will always be a demand.

The band on mariguana and other drugs is a big busness for both the drug cartels saling it and the governments preventing the sale. It’s a win/win for all the people on the top. Presidents look good, politicians make money, cartels make money, and the people are let with the aftermath and an inhumane quality of life.

If you want to stop the spread of rabies you don’t kill the bitten, you kill the dog.

Don’t turn your back on the problem…speak up!!!!