Pain

Prologue

It's 4 AM in Harlem. A muscle in my lower back starts to spasm. It feels like I got shot. I start breathing heavily. For some odd reason the deep breaths help me get through the pain. The minutes turn into hours. During that time I'm shifting my body position in bed, or standing and walking around in my hotel room, to alleviate the pain. I watch the sun brighten the sky behind the countless buildings in Harlem until it's no longer dark.

Chapter One: The Odyssey

My brother and I watched The Odyssey film in theaters about a week before I hurt my back. Working in New York four days a week is tiring when you're from a calm and quiet place like Virginia. The hustle and bustle can be overwhelming. There is not a lot of room for comfort, both literally and figuratively. So coming home on the weekends is the real getaway, as odd as that may seem.

Anyways, the movie was excellent. Although I knew the story of the Odyssey from high school, I felt like Nolan did a great job of portraying it in his production. It takes a lot of hard work to coordinate and produce something like that. I was able to appreciate it on a deeper level, both as a filmmaker and an audience member.

Chapter Two: The Journey

Watching Odysseus on his voyage home resonated with me. I felt like it was an analogy of my life, but moreover, the human struggle.

Odysseus was a success in the sense that he helped conquer Troy. But it was his life after the success that turned out to be even more brutal than the war itself.

I'm not here to draw connections between every part of the movie and my life. That's just too much. The main takeaway was that life is vicious. We may not experience cyclops and sirens, but we definitely experience hardships that can break our spirit if we let them.

When watching The Odyssey, I thought about all the struggles I've faced in life. Seeing Odysseus struggle reminded me of my own. Odysseus could have quit on himself and his men when he was stuck in the cave with the cyclops. He could have stayed deluded with Calypso forever. He could have avoided many obstacles by taking the easy way out and giving up. But instead, he endured. Every challenge was an opportunity for his spirit to break. But he kept going because of his strong will to make it home.

Our lives aren't too far off from this experience. Sure, we may not run into one-eyed monsters or sirens, but we all encounter hardships that stand in the way of our desire to live fulfilling lives.

Chapter Three: Comfort Kills

As cofounders of De La Villa, there's no vacation. Every second that passes by can be used to elevate the brand. So when you see us in Las Vegas, Augusta, or New York City, it's business. This is a harsh reality that people may not like to embrace, because most associate traveling with tanning in the sun and eating at fancy restaurants.

Not for us.

If you travel as often as we have lately, you'll realize traveling can suck. I strongly dislike packing for trips to get on a plane and being away from home. I would rather spend time at the crib and be in my quiet neighborhood.

But if my brother and I gave in to comfort, we wouldn't be Raheem and Naeem. And Odysseus wouldn't be Odysseus. There would be no Odyssey if Odysseus took the easy route home with Agamemnon. There would be no De La Villa if we decided to stick to the conventional nine-to-five lifestyle.

It's our ability to endure hardships to get what we want that makes us who we are.

Chapter Four: A Tough July

The story of our summer started not long after we released our second commercial for Team Durant. We flew to Las Vegas for Session Four of EYBL, then flew back to Virginia only to drive nine hours to South Carolina. During that time we were working hard to pump out content per usual. But at some point, one of us caught COVID. I started feeling terrible towards the end of Peach Jam. It started off with a cough. But it got worse day after day. Fatigue took over.

Although I was barely able to keep myself together, I still managed to fight through the illness and produce great work.

After Peach Jam we had a day to get ready to drive to New York to begin producing a documentary for Nike Pro City. I was feeling terrible all week. It was affecting my perception of our stay in New York. I hated not being home and being sick.

I thought I hated Harlem.

By the second week of our time in New York, the illness had faded away. I was in better spirits. Harlem is great. It's different, but it's got its own spirit. And that's what I love about it.

It was all good. But not for long.

Abruptly, right after interviewing a player on a Tuesday afternoon, my lower back pain flared after I thought it was gone for good. I was limping around all day and fighting through the pain. It was mentally exhausting because I knew I wasn't 100% and still needed film.

I woke up every morning at 4 AM and didn't fall asleep until 6 AM. It was torture. I remember when driving to New York for our third week, I got out of the car ready to pass out because of the excruciating pain. I said, "I don't know if I can do this," to my brother Naeem.

He said, "Dude, we've come too far to stop. You gotta fight through this shit."

We ended up accomplishing our goals for those three weeks, miraculously.

I thought to myself, "What if we actually turned the car around and gave up?" I don't think I could forgive myself if I let the pain win.

Chapter Five: Pain

The reality is pain comes and goes. It's as temporary as emotions. You may feel angry in the morning, but by lunchtime you might feel better, because you can't be mad forever. We all wake up some mornings wishing we could sleep in and avoid a day of struggling at school or work. But if we consistently go off course because of the pains of life that come our way, we may never succeed in our education or keep our jobs.

Epilogue

No one truly knows if Odysseus was a real person. But the story of the Odyssey has been passed down for thousands of years, because it's the reality of life and its hardships that resonate with us.

So next time you want to give up because your journey is getting difficult, remember: there are centuries-old stories of men and women who are remembered, not because they were rich and living in palaces, but because they persevered through adversity instead of laying down.