How to Kill a Snake

In 2010, my older cousin gifted me a $3,000 camera, then came back to take it. What jealousy taught me about altitude, family, and the favour on your life.

The room was painted red. Webcam on the desk. Point-and-shoot in my hand. Friends piled on the floor, laughing into the lens.

The red room. Webcam on top of the monitor. The room where the whole thing started.

That was 2010. The HighClass days. We were posting raw, unfiltered videos to Facebook, and people kept showing up. Funny stuff. Rap videos. Moments. A small community of creatives building something for the love of it.

Then my older cousin came back into my life.

The gift

He'd been gone for years, off doing his own thing. When he came back around, he saw what I was building with a webcam and a borrowed eye. He told me he was proud. He told me I was doing something special.

Then he bought me a $3,000 DSLR.

The DSLR. The gift that opened doors and the gift that came back asking questions.

I didn't ask for it. I was content with what I had. But he insisted. In my eyes, this was the man who took care of me while my mom was at work. He was older, popular, the cool cousin. A father figure. So when he handed me that camera, I treated it like a calling.

I started shooting music videos for rappers in Jane and Finch for $100 a pop. Word spread. The footage looked good. Other artists started calling. Then I was on flights to Cuba, to Jamaica, building a reputation off a camera and a vision.

I taught my cousin everything I knew. How to shoot. How to edit. Photoshop. The whole formula. He tried to run it with his own circle, but his crowd was older, less hungry, less willing to invest. The same playbook didn't work for him.

The call

That's when the calls started.

He told me I owed him for the camera. He told me I was selfish. Ungrateful. A bad person. He told me he was coming to take it back.

I was confused. There were no terms. There was no loan. It was a gift. But the aggression kept coming, and one day he made good on it. He took the camera back.

I sat there with nothing. The brand I'd built was attached to that camera. The clients were attached to that camera. And the man I looked up to had reached into my life and pulled it out.

Some lessons wear the label.

I prayed. I had a few dollars saved. I had no clear path back.

What God did next

Within weeks, I had another $3,000 camera. To this day I can't fully explain how. Doors opened that had no business opening. God moved. That's the only language I have for it.

Back on the block. Different camera, same calling. The work didn't pause.

No weapon formed against me prospered. That isn't theology. That's testimony.

Here's what got darker. Even after he had his camera back, my cousin kept calling. Kept claiming I owed him. He wanted me to feel like I was nothing without him. Like the work, the flights, the clients, the vision, none of it was mine.

That's when I understood what was actually happening.

He didn't want the camera back. He wanted what I had. He wanted the gift behind the gear. And no amount of giving was going to satisfy that, because the thing he was reaching for wasn't something I could hand him.

How to kill a snake

People won't say this out loud, but jealousy doesn't care about blood. It doesn't care about history. It doesn't care that you taught them everything you knew.

Some people will celebrate you until the moment you outpace them. Then they come for the camera.

There's a line I hold onto:

A snake cannot survive at high altitudes. To kill a snake, you must go higher.

You don't argue with it. You don't negotiate with it. You don't drag it up the mountain with you. You climb. You sharpen. You stay on mission. The altitude does the work.

That's what I did. I kept shooting. Kept learning. Kept saying yes to the call. Eventually I was somewhere the snakes couldn't follow.

It cost me a relationship I cared about. I won't pretend that didn't hurt. But the lesson was bigger than the loss.

What sixteen years taught me

I can finally thank him. Not for the camera. For the wound.

Because that wound is the reason I give from overflow now. I pour into people who can never repay me, and I sleep well doing it. I don't keep score. I don't wait for the call demanding what was given back. I move higher, and I bring people with me who are trying to climb, not collect.

HighClass. The community we built when we kept climbing.

If you're early in this, hear me clearly. People don't want what you give them. They want what you have. The thing they're really after is the favour on your life, and that was never yours to hand over.

Stay on the mountain. Sharpen the tools. Keep the circle tight.

The snakes can't make it up here.