Pursuit of Happiness: Dice Raw on How a Jail Call From Wallo267 Helped Him Appreciate Life More Than Ever

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Mental health can come down to any number of things: good sleep patterns, therapy, healthy eating habits. Empathy. When managing his own well-being, Dice Raw looks to the past.

“I understand the world of yesterday of ’95, I remember the world of 1985,” he shares with Okayplayer. “Understand the world of yesterday while you’re in the world of today, because the world has only been like this for five minutes in the big scheme of things. It’s been desert and churning your own butter for most of it. Whole Foods and all of this is new.”

His musing is a nod to the power of perspective on time, temporality, and opportunity. While he can look to the world of 30 years ago, he can also look to the experiences of strangers or incarcerated friends to help maintain a proper emotional equilibrium. “I try not to let things affect me too much in a negative way,” he says.

Speaking with Okayplayer for the latest edition ofPursuit of Happiness, Dice Raw takes a look at how a little intellectual rearrangement helps him process the trauma in his life.

Dice Raw: I grew up in the ’80s where they really hadn’t started caring about kids that much. We used to ride on the back of the pickup truck with no seat belts. Talking about your emotions really wasn’t even a relevant conversation for men. For men, especially little boys at that time, it was the typical, “You gotta be tough, you got to button up and straighten up.” So that was the premise of it. But I was always encouraged to express myself and say how I felt and had real conversations with my parents that were probably not the typical kid-parent conversation. But we never reached into talking about emotions or even understanding them.

When I was having an issue when I was younger, I didn’t even notice it. It was just viewed as just bad behavior. I had a mental health crisis in 2022. I lost my mother and father in the same year. That was a heavy lift for me. And I really had to just think about it. I had to learn. I had to learn what grief is, how it works. It was almost like I had to learn how the world works. Those were major episodes. I got through them with a lot of prayer and meditation.

It’s all about perspective. No matter what it is, once it’s already happened, it’s kind of already happened. So how long do we grieve? If something is good, how long do we celebrate? It could be like, “This great thing happened to me 25 years ago. Man, I’m still celebrating.” It’s like, what the hell is the matter with you? Similarly, it’s like, “Okay, something bad happened to me 20 years ago and I’m still going through it.” But why? We’ve got to keep those things in mind.

It’s all about thoughts. One of my friends, Wallo267, called me from prison. He had been spending his life in prison. He got out of jail, and he went back. He called me one day like, “Yo, man, how you doing, brother?” I said, “I’m okay. I got this going on. I got this problem. I got this other problem. I got that problem.” I said, “How you doing?” He said, “Brother, I’m great.” He was doing another 20-year sentence. That was his perspective while he was incarcerated.

At the end of the day, you woke up today with two hands and two feet and two eyes. You’re inhaling and exhaling air.