What Happened To You, Man?

What happened to you, man? You used to be beautiful. – Ordell Robbie to Louis Gara (played by Samuel L. Jackson and Robert De Niro, respectively, in Jackie Brown) Watch the movie; it's a great scene.


This is how I thought of my life up until a few months ago. I thought that somehow I had peaked during my high school years, slacked off in college, and was faced with a long lifetime of sliding into obscurity and mediocrity. I had done well and gotten a few things accomplished, but nothing had really paid off and I had not made the big-time in anything that I had done. Sure, I had done more than most, but it really didn’t count for much in the long run or in terms of my expectations of myself.

All of this introspection that I have been doing lately has convinced me that I have been wrong about framing my life in this way. The phrase “time heals all wounds” applies to this; or maybe time dulls the pain of the past. Thinking back on the past, I realize that everything wasn’t all that great. I often felt like a fish out of water. I had to find all kinds of ways to armor and protect myself from people and circumstances that didn’t have my best interests in mind.

In many cases, I wasn’t able to or wasn’t allowed to work to my potential because of politics or simply not knowing any better. Other times, I just didn’t do the work. I think that in some ways I am just idealizing a past whose pain I have forgotten and whose pleasures I have fantasized up to greater heights. Either way, it was not all that it was cracked up to be. I also know how truly ignorant and short-sighted I was back then; not that I am that much wiser now. Now, I think that I know what I don’t know. Then, I didn’t have a clue.

Now that I look back, I recognize that I really didn’t have a great life. I was rolling along on expectations that were generated for me by people around me. Those expectations had nothing to do with me finding contentment or fulfillment. They didn’t treat me as an individual with my own unique needs. And they for damn sure didn’t place any value on my happiness.

Taking all this in now, I find that I have the opportunity to do something that most people don’t try to do: I have the opportunity to engineer the life I want. I am now truly committed to becoming the artist who paints a picture of the life that he wants. I have no more excuses because they really don’t mean shit. I also can’t procrastinate anymore because I am finding that it is actually easier to just do the work and be done with it.

I have come to the point where I am attempting to remove all of the distractions, negativity, and general bullshit of everyday life. I am trying to totally focus on gathering the resources and circumstances around me to accomplish the tasks that I have set before myself. I am moving toward putting all of my primary effort toward reshaping myself and my immediate environment to my purpose.

In this process, I am learning two truly profound things. First, and for lack of a better way to say it, you can’t impress Life. Life doesn’t really care whether you win or lose or whether you meet some arbitrary, societal standard. That kind of stuff really isn’t important and doesn’t qualify me for bonus points in the Game of Life. It’s only important to people, and usually to people I don’t want to be near. Approval of my goals and accomplishments is up to me.

Second, it takes little victories on a consistent basis to win battles and to make progress. This has been the more difficult lesson to learn. I learned at an early age that it was important that I do as much as I can do at every opportunity to accomplish a goal. I am finding now that is not a good strategy to follow. Cramming is not a good way to study or to accomplish goals.

I think that a lot of this comes from the need to appear busy or rushed or pressured. People want to see you sweating and hustling toward something, even when that type of activity or effort is not necessary. For some reason, people get jealous when things are made to look too easy. I am beginning to truly not give a damn about people’s feelings.

I am finding that real planning and task management are much more important than super effort. I have found myself doing small things every day and getting closer to my goals much quicker than I could by trying to get it all done at once. It amazes me because it almost seems too easy. The results, however, are beginning to speak for themselves, to me at least.

Anyway, I feel like a door is beginning to open on a newer, better, brighter version of life for me. In some ways, I think that I just had to calm down, focus, and allow it to happen instead of trying to force it.

Dedicated to my boy "Thumper"