First off I would like to apologize to friends and family that use this blog as a pulse to determine how I am doing. Recently two of the best men I have ever known passed away and some things at home happened that completely changed my perception of life. Normally, I would work that kind of thing out here, but the nature of it was intensely personal and private and affected more people than just myself, so I opted to keep my mouth shut. Once the dust settles I will be less cryptic and discuss exactly what I am talking about, but for now, please accept my apology for my silence.
I recently read a blog posted to my wife's wall by a person I have very little respect for and after reading the blog, I have even less. The title is something along the lines of, "Reasons You Will Never Do Anything Great With Your Life". The thesis is that while everyone else is living in mediocrity, the writer of the blog is improving himself and challenging himself, making mistakes, going out of comfort zones and destroying other people's arguments. That would be fascinating if we all lived on separate islands and did not interact with human beings on a regular basis. The truth is living a life of constantly breaking boundaries and societal norms is quite selfish. It is true that self improvement is important, but there should be a balance in one's life. As a counter argument, I would present the concept of many in body, one in mind. No matter how strong a single person is, if he is faced with an army of people with a single goal, the army is almost certainly stronger. I believe the argument that is being made is that most people do not care about what they are doing and the writer is deeply passionate in the pursuit of truth. The failure of the argument is that the writer believes he must pursue that truth by himself only. Many hands make for light work. Together each can achieve more. These are cliched phrases that basically mean, "If you want to succeed, the best way to do that is swallow your pride and ask for help."
I know that I will always be stronger than people that feel this way. I have some of the greatest friends, family and loved ones on the planet. As I have been going through all of the struggles I have, the love and support from my friends and family who read this (and even those who don't) has bolstered my strength. As I have made clear, the real support I wanted was from my partner, so I have forgotten to see that she is the one person that does not have faith in me. Everyone else on the planet seems to love and support me. Whenever I look out, I see a sea of people that look at what I have gone through and are in awe of the fact that I am still standing and still creating artistically. Everyone else sees me and sees incredible strength--a warrior. I have been so fixated on the fact that I am not getting the support I want from one source, that I have forgotten to seek it elsewhere. I have been a fool and I have been limiting myself. And, that is my point: I am strong because I have my friends, when I try to improve myself on my own, I will ALWAYS be weaker than when I seek help. If I asked, they would probably literally move a mountain for me. They do this because they love me and care about me. They know that I need them even when I am too proud to ask for help. And every last one of them believe that I am a strong and wonderful man who deserves the effort. I need to embrace that strength. One person may be stronger, faster, smarter, more well read, more attractive, etc. But, one person is not stronger than my friends that would go through Hell with me. Many of them have. They have stood right by me and loved me as I have lost myself to pain and depression and continued to love me through it, even when I did not have the strength to love them back. I would take any one of those good people with their boring jobs and good life choices over any person that thinks they have achieved greatness because they have worked so hard on themselves (by themselves). My loving friends individually are better than those that see every other person on the planet as a rival and every helping hand as a jibe at their abilities. Greatness is having the strength to help others improve, not focusing on one's self. "The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." When I heard the song, "All You Need Is Love", I thought the Beatles were talking about relationships. If you pay even the slightest bit of attention to the lyrics, you will notice, they are talking about life. Every one of my friends gets it. Being strong means loving others and protecting them, and making sure you hurt them as little as possible. Being strong is not being better than someone and being able to prove it by out arguing them, but giving and being able to receive more love and have a bigger heart than another. That is the measure of a man. A man like that may never do great things noticed by the world, but he will do great things for those directly around him and impact all he touches positively.
Society is not the enemy. People rant and rave about the media and that we are all being oppressed and that life is shit. They simply do not see. Civilization keeps us in check. Every person on the planet has some dark desires. So many people think that to deny those is to suppress part of themselves. That is not so. Making sure that you do not give in to hurting others even when you have the urge to is strength. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the strength to overcome it. A good man is not one that has not ever thought about pushing someone into an oncoming train, wanted to randomly haul off and punch someone, thought about cheating on his wife or steal from a store. A good man is a person who has had those urges, realized they were wrong and let them go. Why did he do that? Because he knows it would hurt others. If he pushed someone into a train, not only would he be ending that person's life but harming everyone who cared about that person. If he steals from a store with enough consistency and others do too, the store will go out of business and no one will have have the pleasure of shopping there and everyone that worked there will be out of a job. Doing whatever you want to do and forgetting about the consequences means you don't care about others. Civilization and society force us to be with other people. Going out and making mistakes and only caring about one's self means people will get hurt. Yes, eventually you will learn hard lessons, but there is a way of doing it while not hurting those around you. The best way to learn something is to teach it. And, the best way to teach is to care about the subject and the student's needs. If you have ever had the pleasure of running a classroom or mentoring someone you know that. You will find yourself uttering the phrase, "I feel like I am getting more out of this than I am giving". Love is the same. Helping someone, caring for someone and being a friend to someone can only make you stronger and better while you lift them up to achieve in turn.
Throughout my experience, I have been focused on my wife. I have wanted to try to make things up to her. She went through so much, and I wanted to give back to her. She has not let me and that disheartens me. When you couple that with the physical lack of energy that I have found pervasive with all the cancer survivors I have talked to, the weakness and impotence I feel is immeasurable. Here is the closest way I can equate it to someone that has not been through it. The feeling a regular person has when they are trying to force themselves to go to the gym when they are a little sick or just do not feel like it. They struggle with it. They try to make deals with themselves to barter for a different day. If they are strong enough, they go anyway and may not have a great work out, but feel good about it. That is how I feel every day just trying to get out of bed to clean the house or run errands. The difference is, generally after a person forces themselves to work out when they don't feel like it, they feel good...I just feel drained getting out of bed every day. And it is a constant, never-ending struggle. There is no break. There is no point when I just feel good. But, that is my point. That is not weakness, that is strength. Not only am I forcing myself to get stuff done every day, I am now working out pretty hard 4 days a week. I could try to do that on my own, I could try to use every ounce of will that I possess. And often that is how I get it done, but what has made the real difference? The love and support of people like my mom, Stacey Newman, Paul Wick, Randy Crisman, Andrea Baumgartner, Sean Donahoe, Jeremy Champe, Colin and Kat, Amy and Jeff, Kenny Smith and too many more to name. My strength, my ability to succeed is not based on myself alone, but my friends' love.
It is past time I embraced that. It is also past time I gave back to my dearest friends that love me. I want to be the selfless man that I once was. I want to feed their strength as they have fed mine. The writer of that blog may be more successful and more attractive than me. Perhaps he, the person that posted it on my wife's wall or people like them can even earn my wife's love better than I can at this point. But if that is their way of thinking, they will always be limited by their own attributes. They can only ever see the world around them as a harsh place where no one is there for them that they can rely on. Maybe they are better than everyone around them. Maybe they are stronger and faster and more intelligent: But they also go through life alone even when they are with people. They see their neighbor as a rival or someone to outwit and not a friend that wishes to help them. I wish them good luck in their pursuits. My strength will only be limited by the love I give, the love I receive and the strength of my friends and their friendship. With that as my rock, I am indefatigable. I may lose individual battles against such people, but in the war for happiness and success, I can only be victorious. And that is the only fight truly worth winning.
That is, of course all my opinion. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps the writer of the blog and those like him are correct and they must focus on themselves because they are alone in this world. If and when they have a girlfriend, wife or partner, they will compete with even them. I guess I would rather live in a world of love and trust and be wrong than live in a world of constant battle with everyone I meet. I would rather lay down my sword and embrace a rival as a friend then spend my life sharpening my blade for a battle that may never come. That does not mean I am not working on myself. I am doing so harder than ever, but my first priority is loving those who love me. That seems to be more effective than how I have been spending my time. Perhaps we are all on different roads to the same thing and I have the good fortune to have a different experience, making me choose to see friends instead of rivals. I cannot say. I do not know the answers to life, as my history clearly points out. I have failed more than I have succeeded. But generally when I fail, it is when I forget to love those around me. And I guess it depends how you grade failure. For me, the main thing should be are you happy, content, and are you loved? Money, things, achievements should be secondary (sometimes that is hard to remember). That grading allows me to look at the shambles that is my life currently and realize that I am one of the most successful people on the planet. I am deeply loved by many, so thank you to all of you for all of the amazing things I have done in my life that no one will ever see.
