A Quote by Nikita Parris

I was pretty wild as a kid. Football tamed me. It put me on the right path, got me focused. — © Nikita Parris
I was pretty wild as a kid. Football tamed me. It put me on the right path, got me focused.
I'm an imperfect person. I've let anger, jealousy, all the emotions, get the best of me. If I go into books, word by word, little by little, they help re-center and re-ground me and put me on the right path. Life is a journey. I'm very focused on the things I do and have learned not to be pressured.
Just to stay focused on my path and not the path that other people or media want to put me in. Just to stay focused on my vision, because I put out what I want people to know about me. Everything else is what the media puts out.
It was my dad who got me into football. One day, he surprised me playing in the garage. He thought I was a thief. I always played football when I was a kid.
Most people who have kids are, "Hey, I want another me. I like me. I'm pretty cool, and I've got really great ideas, and the way I think is the right way to think. Let's put another one of me out there.
Once I got a bit older, and we could see there could be a future in football, it was everyone's blessing to chase that dream. And it did me a lot of good: It put me through college, it gave me an education, it got me a little taste of pro ball and a lot of good memories. I don't regret any of it.
For me, I stay pretty focused on football, and then at the end of the day, you just go home and relax.
I'm of the mindset that most people who have kids are, which is, 'Hey, I want another me. I like me. I'm pretty cool, and I've got really great ideas, and the way I think is the right way to think. Let's put another one of me out there.' So I'll have kids one day.
I got started on my spiritual path when I was a kid. My mom taught me how to meditate and brought me to ashrams and spiritual circles.
If I ever really felt depressed, I would just start putting on all my old records that I played as a kid, because the whole thing that really lifted me then still lifted me during those other times. It was good medicine for me, and it still does that for me when I put something on. Isn't it wonderful that we've got all that good medicine? I think it's got to be all part of our DNA, this mass communication through music. That's what it is. It's got to be, hasn't it? Music is the one thing that has been consistently there for me. It hasn't let me down.
To me, football is very personal. Even as a kid, I looked at football in dramaturgical terms. It wasn't the score that interested me, it was the struggle.
Basically, we've grown up very focused on the institution. The institution tells me what to do. It tells me where to go. It tells me what my career path is, and then I, sort of, attach my own personal desires, my own personal interests. I think we're living in a time where we're going to have to change - to put people in the center.
The Navajo have that wonderful image of what they call the pollen path. The Navajo say, 'Oh, beauty before me, beauty behind me, beauty to the right of me, beauty to the left of me, beauty above me, beauty below me, I'm on the pollen path.'
When I got shot, it changed my life tremendously, and put me on the right path. And that's when everything started happening there for me with boxing and my family and just everything. My life just took a big turn and started going uphill.
I was on a path that could've really led to disaster, and the one thing for me that really kept me focused and gave me something to believe in and a sense of self-worth and a discipline was music.
My first experience with football was not very good because I didn't plan on playing football. I was just playing hookie one day and I was a sophomore and decided not to go to class. And the principal - normally he does his rounds and I thought I had him down pretty good where he was going to be - he sort of walked up behind me and scared me. He noticed I could run real fast. So that's how I got introduced to football.
I joke that I learned the essentials of storytelling from Hanna-Barbera, but I pretty much did. That kind of television is what enamored me as a kid, and that's what really got me hooked. You could say that's where it all began.
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