Stopping the Tragic Loss of Life Caused by Purposeless Living

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”—Friedrich NietzscheA great tragedy of modern-day life is the fact that we seek a how to live before we have a why to live and we teach our children how to live without helping them first discover a why to live for, not knowing that when they and we have a why, the how will take care of itself. This book is my attempt to help people, especially the young, to discover the why of their existence. Arming people with the answer to this question is the most effective way I know to help stop the senseless violence that takes place in our society all too often. At the same time, I want to address the argument that life is so hard for our young black men that is why they sell drugs and commit other crimes as it is the only means they have to feed themselves and their families. As bad as things are for many of our inner-city youth, I don’t believe they need less challenges but more, for the simple reason that it is obvious that the ones they currently face are not succeeding in drawing the best and champions out of them. And this is ultimately what every challenge should do no matter how tough it is or poor you are. Kids are not selling drugs on the corner because life is hard for them; they are doing so because that is the easiest thing for them to do versus going out and working a steady job eight hours a day. So don’t tell me how unfortunate kids are today to have so many challenges. When I was growing up, I was told that “when the going gets tough, the tough gets going.” What has taken the place of this saying in this generation is the belief that “desperate times call for desperate measures.” Desperate measures are not always the wisest choice of actions. What the youth today is doing to survive is desperate, but it is not truly necessary; in most cases, it is just convenient.Danny has been certified by Toastmasters International as a competent public speaker (1991 East Moline). He received his GED from the Chicago City Colleges (1981) and obtained a certificate in graphic arts from Southeastern Illinois College (1987). He is a former member of the Pan-African Revolutionary Socialist Party. He spent twenty years in prison and ten in the Elgin Mental Health Center. While in the hospital, he wrote over eight hundred poems, three books of daily meditations, and numerous speeches and Afrocentric anecdotes. He also acted as a mentor for younger consumers while there, leading his own peer-support groups and chairing GROW for four years (2003–07). He has been clean of all illegal drugs for fourteen years.Since getting out of the hospital in 2013, he has written seven books: A Ten Part Book to Maximizing Your Potential; Life Poems; Three-Part Process to Breaking the Recidivism Cycle; Young, Gifted and Black; Redeeming the Time; Let Them Eat Cake; and The 50 Most Positive Things I Know About African Americans.Danny’s mission is to provide others who have struggled with addictions and mental illnesses and a history of going back and forth to prison with a better image of what they can be with the use of faith and a meaningful life purpose as a guide.You can contact him for workshops and testimonies at dannycrystal7963@gmail.com.