i’m sick of the fence mentality. if it seems greener on the other side, it’s likely because you’ve stomped it into a muddy morass on this side.
It bums me out when i hear from folks: “Oh, it’s so great here, and i’m doing so well, and a few things are off, but they’ll only get better…”, then awhile later it’s, “Yeah, this scene is totally played out, i gotta get outta here, maybe back to where i was before…”. Stop it! i don’t even want to hear how happy you are if you’re just going to feel shitty about it a few months down the road.
Truth: No matter where you go, there you are. Scenery changes nothing. Other people can inspire, but they change nothing. You can’t have it both ways, but you can have it every way; expecting anything better than what you have is denying the greatness of the simple things. The air is good. The water is clean. Feel immense gratitude that you’re not one of 70,000+ rotting corpses in Pakistan. Feel immense gratitude that you didn’t just lose it all in a hurricane.
Hey you, the rest of the first-world elite: look in the mirror and just try to slap the hypocracy off your own face. You, the person who advocates “Kill Your TV!”, yet bemoans the cancellation of a favourite show. You, the person who’s “always broke”, but lives in Western Europe, or North America. And you, the person with the freedom to go anywhere, do anything, and yet always feels bored by it all.
i won the lottery the day i was born. Does that mean i should stop trying? Hell no. Should i complain when i hit those stumbling blocks? Hell no.
My friend Mose Malone here is 77 years old. He can barely walk these days. In his 40’s, he was totally paralyzed from the neck down in a workplace accident. He lived in a hospital bed for 4 years. 20 years of physical therapy later, and here he is, driving out to West end to visit, hobbling over from the car to sit with us under tha palms. When he asks me, “Bruthah! ‘ow you bin doin’ dis beautiful day?”, well fuck, i can’t much complain, can i? Actually, if i had anything to complain about, it’s gone, right then and there.
i guess those people are my heroes; the ones who remain positive and joyful in the face of adversity, and the people who got out there and ‘did it’, without first knowing how it would work out. And the people who avoided all the fences, and found the boundless fields…