“i”
One Song One Story
September 2026
Before Eric
September has asked us to consider what we choose to carry—the things passed down, picked up, and held onto as we become who we are.
Eric’s story enters that conversation through a song.
Kendrick Lamar’s “i” met him in a season shaped by self-doubt, belonging, and the pressure to fit. But his story is also about what stayed with him: the people who stood in his corner, the belief they offered when his own was harder to find, and what he eventually learned to give himself.
Because sometimes what we carry forward is not simply what was handed to us.
Sometimes, we choose it.
Outside the Box
Before Eric knew how to say he loved himself, he drew a world where he might.
He remembers sitting alone with a sketchbook, photographs spread beside him, drawing his version of a utopia—a world he wanted but wasn’t yet convinced was possible for him.
At the time, it was an escape.
Years later, he sees something else in those pages: a version of himself reaching for possibility before he had the language to name it.
Kendrick Lamar’s “i” would eventually give him some of that language. On the album version, the declaration of self-love arrives amid crowd noise and interruption.
Eric came to that understanding from the other side of it.
“It is often said that you never know how high you can go until you reach your lowest point.”
He knows what it feels like to reach the bottom of his own thinking—to question whether he is good enough, worthy of anything good, or capable of coming out on top.
At times, self-doubt became something heavier. Depression. The feeling that no matter how often he pulled himself up, something was waiting to pull him back down.
That is part of what he hears in “i.”
The song gave language to something Eric was still learning: hearing that he should love himself and learning how to do it are two different things.
That lesson had started long before he knew he was learning it.
Trying to Fit
As a young Black man moving through middle school and high school, Eric didn’t always know who he was yet.
“I always thought to myself that I would have to fit in with a certain crowd just for me to be able to get through life with even an ounce of security.”
Acceptance felt like security. He wanted to be liked by everyone and hated by no one.
So he tried to understand who he was while carrying the weight of who he thought he was supposed to be.
The sketchbook offered another possibility.
On those pages, Eric could imagine beyond the limits he had placed around himself. What began as an escape was also evidence that some part of him was already reaching beyond the version he thought he had to maintain.
“It revealed that I was longing for something that I didn’t think was even possible for me.”
Somewhere between the person he was trying to become for everyone else and the person emerging on those pages was Eric.
He just hadn’t completely found him yet.
And finding him would require more than looking inward. Some of the clearest reflections came from the people who already saw something in him worth holding onto.
In His Corner
Self-doubt can change the evidence.
Mistakes begin to feel like proof. Missed opportunities become confirmation.
But the people in Eric’s corner were offering different evidence.
“The people that I’ve had in my corner up to this point in life have not only been what I’ve been needing, but what I’ve been looking for.”
Their encouragement, affirmation, and love helped Eric see what he couldn’t always see on his own.
That mattered because there were times when self-doubt and self-deprecation cost him possibilities, connections, and relationships. A mistake could become evidence that he was completely flawed instead of evidence that he had simply made one.
The people around him helped challenge that version of the story.
Eventually, someone else had to join them.
Eric.
He had to learn to offer himself some of what they had been giving him: grace, encouragement, patience, love.
“I started to tell myself how much I love myself a lot more.”
That sentence brings Eric’s story close to the heart of “i.”
Self-love didn’t have to wait for the struggle to disappear.
For Eric, it couldn’t.
He was learning to choose himself while still becoming himself. And the more clearly he began to value who he was, the more clearly he could see who belonged beside him.
Who Gets in the Room
“Misery loves company.”
For Eric, that realization came with a boundary.
He no longer wants to remain in rooms with people who would rather see his downfall become part of their story than see his growth become part of his.
Not everyone deserves the same access.
Not every room requires him to fit.
And not every version of himself that once felt safe needs to follow him forward.
For years, Eric believed he needed to maintain a certain box. A shell. A version of himself that seemed necessary because he thought it was the only way to be.
Eventually, he realized the box was never big enough.
“Nothing in this world is going to fit in that singular box.”
Neither does he.
Outside the Box
Maybe that is where Eric’s story and “i” meet most clearly.
Not at the end of struggle. Not after every insecurity has disappeared.
But in what becomes possible when neither gets to decide who he is.
Self-doubt. The need to belong. Mistakes he allowed to define him for too long. People more comfortable with his downfall than his growth. The belief that there was one box he needed to fit inside.
Eric doesn’t have to pretend those things never existed to move beyond them.
He gives himself grace.
He appreciates himself. Thanks himself. Makes room for motivation, spiritual and emotional healing, and the values that make him who he is.
He holds close the people who genuinely stand in his corner and knows when to leave a room that asks him to be less of himself.
And he keeps becoming a man he can look at in the mirror and recognize.
For Eric, “i” isn’t the soundtrack to having everything figured out. It is closer to a practice—the steady work of choosing himself and recognizing the man looking back at him.
For years, he searched for security by figuring out where he fit. He knows now that becoming himself was never going to happen by making himself smaller for the box.
The life Eric once imagined on the pages of a sketchbook was never going to fit inside the box. Neither was he.
The Record Keeps Spinning.
Every song carries a memory.
Some become the soundtrack.
Others become the story.
One Song • One Story 002