The Other Wes More Blog 1 (Introduction - Chapter 3)

                       

                                                ("One making decision for future life" via Adobe Stock)

Page 27: Tony lectures Wes about taking school seriously and staying off the streets. Talk about the relationship between those two.  What advice do you give your siblings based on your mistakes in life?

As we are living in a day and age where mistakes can completely alter someone’s life and their ability to make a name for themselves due to the nature of social media. But in the book called The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates, written by Wes Moore, the author goes into the true story of two boys named Wes Moore who happened to live a life that was seemingly the same, but as the boys started to become older, that is where their paths in life are completely different and take a turn. However, in this week’s blog, we are going to take a dive into the question of: What advice do you give your siblings based on your mistakes in life? And how this relates to Tony and Wes. But first, we need to understand a little bit of the back story of the other Wes Moore and his older brother Tony. The other Wes Moore lived a life in Baltimore, Maryland, in the Cherry Hill section of public housing with his mother, and after some time he moved to Northwood. Which, in comparison, is far better than the living conditions than in Cherry Hill because that section of Baltimore was known for high rates of drug use, poverty, and despair. 

                                         

( "Wes Moore" via Kansas State University )             ("Wes More" via Kansas State University)

All throughout Wes’s life, his mother wasn’t really in the picture all that much since she would leave their home at 8:30 a.m. and she wouldn’t be home until the evening since she would be at work. And since she was working as many jobs as she could, her main goal was to be able to provide for her son while not having a male figure in Wes’s life. By Wes’s mother not being home was an opportunity for Tony to be able to watch Wes in the daytime since, at this moment, Wes was only 8 and Tony was 6 years older. However, with the understanding and knowledge of Wes’s mother not being home much, there were many opportunities for Wes to be able to make friends with other kids out in the street, especially with a boy named Woody. While Tony was the only person in the same age range as Wes, he started to become the only older male figure in his life, and he always looked up to Tony. But things aren't as clean-cut as they are made to be since Tony was in a high-ranking drug dealing business at the age of 14. This started to affect the relationship that Wes had with his other brother. And having Wes exposed to things like this caused Wes to get into all kinds of trouble, like the time when Wes was playing with a football out in the street with his friend Woody, and Wes got into an altercation and ended up in handcuffs at the age of 8. In addition, in the first part of this chapter, we get to see what I have already discussed, but as the chapter goes on, Tony goes into a lecture with Wes about not following in his footsteps and that he should stay off the streets. What I find really interesting about the relationship that Wes has with his brother Tony is that from the beginning, Tony didn't want Wes to continue to walk in Tony's footsteps because it is shown in this chapter that the actions he has taken were not good ones and that Tony wants Wes to have a better life than what Tony is currently going through. Since Tony knew what his life was going to look like if he continued in it or if Wes slipped into it with him. But most importantly, I think that Tony was trying to set a better example since he is the eldest and that all of his actions are going to be reflected in Wes if Tony doesn’t tell Wes to snap out of it. 

Furthermore, how does Wes and Tony’s situation relate to the mistakes I have made in my life? And what kinds of advice I would give to my siblings so that they don't repeat them while thinking about this question, it was hard to pick just one, but after some thought, I found one. One thing that I will always tell my two sisters is to be careful of the friends you make in your life. The reason why I say this to them is because there was a point in time when I had a best friend that I knew from elementary school all the way into the 10th grade of high school, and by the end of January of that year, we no longer became friends. To share the main point of this story, sometime in the 9th grade, she introduced me to some of her online friends, and for a long time we all became really good friends until one day everything took a turn that made me realize the type of person I was friends with. And after many talks that I had with my mother, she helped me realize that the type of friendship that my ex-best friend had envisioned was not the same as what I consider a friendship to look like. I say all of this to say that she was never a bad person, but after knowing her for so long, at some point, we were going to naturally distance ourselves from each other. And to come back to the question of how my story relates to the relationship that Tony has with Wes, I am a firm believer that your best sense of judgment is one that we can feel in our bodies and hearts. Like what is shown in Chapter 2, Tony does care for his brother and wants the best for him, and the only way to protect him is by trying to guide him in the right direction, which is something that I am trying to implement with my two sisters since I am the eldest. 

To conclude this week’s blog post and to wrap up all of the main points of the questions that I spoke of, Tony is trying to guide Wes in the right direction. And one of the only ways he knows how to do it is to lecture Wes into not going down the path that Tony is going down. But there is one thing that I want my audience to know and think about as they are reading my post: mistakes are what we give to those who are worthy to be forgiven, but it is up to the person who will forgive those who deserve to be forgiven. And it is okay to be able to forgive yourself for the situations we get ourselves into because we are just humans learning as we go, and there is never a right or wrong answer to life.

Sources:

1. Moore, Wes. The Other Wes Moore: Of One Name and Two Fates. Spiegel & Grau, 2010.

2. The Other WESMOORE - Kansas State University, www.k-state.edu/ksbn/docs/Wes_Moore_Guide.pdf

3. Mantinov. “One Making Decision for Future Life Stock Photo.” Adobe Stock, stock.adobe.com/images/one-making-decision-for-future-life/165715698?as_campaign=ftmigration2&as_channel=dpcft&as_campclass=brand&as_source=ft_web&as_camptype=acquisition&as_audience=users&as_content=closure_asset-detail-page.