Things Just Happen - What I've Learned

I can write. That is one thing I can do. God its been a long time. I have learned a lot. I can write about what I have learned. I have thought about it now for a few days. What have I learned? I have learned that things happen. Things just happen. 

One minute Bas and I had cars. This morning his car breaks down. It gets towed to a shop. He has no car. Two hours later, my car gets towed for 12 unpaid parking tickets. Wow. That is unbelievable. “12 unpaid parking tickets? Are you serious?” “Yes. We have a court order to tow your vehicle. You will have to pay these tickets.” “Wow. What a drag. I'd love to say thanks, but you just totally ruined my day.” “Sorry guy...” You wake up one day and all of a sudden both of us don't have cars. Just bam! Out of the blue like that. Things do happen. People lose their parents or their children. Just bam out of the blue. People wake up one day and they have cancer or heart disease. Or they get fired. Or they find out that their husband or their wife is cheating on them. People wake up one day and find out their child has been shot at school. This happened three times in one week to three different children at three different schools here in Florida. And this was last week alone. And then there's that girl they found dead in Sarasota. Things like this happen. You wake up one day and you discover that your daughter has been raped kidnapped and murdered. All in one day. How do you deal with that? Bill Cosby lost his son to some random sniper on the highway in LA. Arnold Schwarzenegger became a governor of one of our states. A female surfer got attacked by a shark who bit off her arm. Things happen. That man who was saving his wife in a freezer for years after she died, hoping he could find a way to bring her back to life. This is life. it is crazy. it is only our deep seated need to make it not crazy in our brains that makes us believe, somehow, that it is not crazy. but it is. it is all around us. all the time. But good things happen too. People win the lottery. People get raises. They get promotions. People win Grammy awards. They win Primaries. They get married. People have babies. Things are happening all around us. All the time. This is something I have learned.

What else have I learned? It has been some time since I have been in the world of the common man. Many many years. Many years since I had even thought about it. or heard about it. But I am glad that I am having a chance to experience it again. I am learning a lot. Today I got to see a bit of it. First we had to go to the bank to get cash. And then to the courthouse to pay all these tickets. And then to this tow place to get the car. I got to see the world of the common man for a few hours. For the last few months I have been seeing it more and more, even since the change. Ever since I decided to.... I have been forced to live, not entirely, but close to the edge of the world of the common man. And I will report from the front lines that it is not pretty. It is not glamorous. It is not beautiful. it is not artistic. It does not love. There is very little beauty in the world of the common man. There is very little luxury. There is very little freedom. There is very little kindness to one another. It is fun. But it is all about survival. And when it is all about survival, not much else matters. This is something I have learned.

I have gone into and meditated on it. And it is because as people begin to live longer and longer in this world, they begin to lose hope. They lose that shining happy optimism that we all once had as children. They begin to resent one another more and more. you can see it in the lines at the post office and the dmv and the banks and the stores that people shop at. the people that work at American post offices are monsters. They are brute and cold. I have stood in lines at the post office lately, for the first time in almost eight years. twice now. The bank too. and I have been amazed at how rude the post office employees are to other people. I have been amazed at how people don't speak to each other in lines, where ever they are. I look around while I am in the lines. Everyone just looks forward or down at their feet. As if they are all prisoners in this quiet twilight zone. As if we are all just trapped. Don't get caught up in this I tell myself. You are not this. this is not you. God where is this? who are all these people being? Just standing here looking around and not talking to each other? Doesn’t anyone want to sing or something? I cannot get caught up in this misery that is the life of the common man I tell myself. I try to start up conversations with the people around me. People look at me like I am strange. why is he talking to us? he does not know me... why is he so happy? doesn’t he know how hard life is?

If you are not rich and you cannot afford to have people work for you, to do everything for you, then you are forced to do many things on your own. and it is not fun. This is the world of the common man. I understand why people would tell me, life is not easy Fishy. I couldn’t understand this before. I would look at them funny. God what are you talking about? Life is so easy I would say. But I understand now. and I understand why people drink alcohol. I couldn’t understand why people drank alcohol before. it seemed like such a waste of time and energy and brain cells. It makes you forget... who wants to forget? It makes you slow down and be lazy... who wants to slow down or be lazy? I couldn’t figure it out... but I understand it now.... drinking is the way people forget the struggles. This is something else I have learned.

I give money a lot. Even more now. the poorer I get the more money I give to people who are poorer than I am. Because I understand. Life isn't easy. And its not so much fun. Not as fun as when you are rich. Giving money to people makes it more fun. It makes it more bearable. I get a lot of joy out of it. Somehow, it helps my own burdens seem lessened.

I have been rich and I have been poor and then rich again and then poor again. now I am floating somewhere in between. I have learned that anyone who tells you that money does not matter is either lying because they have an ulterior motive, or they just don’t know because they have never been either rich or poor; depending on what they are when they are telling you this. a lot of middle class people will tell you this. but they just don't know. maybe they need to tell themselves this. I can see that. But money does matter. The truth is, the sad truth is that money matters more than almost anything else. it is the difference between life and death to many of us. it is the difference between happiness and extreme sadness. money is the difference between being healthy and being sick. It is the difference between being respected and being disrespected. And perhaps this is just here in America. but I have noticed it in every other country I have lived in as well. money, as unfortunate as it is, seems to be the most important thing in the world to us as humans right now. maybe this will change for us one day. but now. here. money is everything. some people will say that health is more important than money. but if you do not have money you cannot afford to be healthy. At least not in America.

I continued to think about this as I went though my day. I have started to listen more to people who have jobs. Cooper was telling me last night that he and his wife wanted to start their own business. but they are afraid... I looked up at him. hundreds of thoughts rushed to the surface in an instant. “For God sakes man, don't even consider the fears. Just do it. I see the looks on their faces. The working people. I see how tired they are. How worn out and tired... I have been self employed almost my entire adult life. before that, back in the college days, I had to work for other people. I became a part of the working class for a short time. a few years. I went from job to job. Fifty or more odd jobs... just going from job to job. It was devastating. It was disillusioning. It was disheartening. You are forced to associate with people you would not normally.

[I remember this one time I worked at McDonalds when I was I think about 14 or 15---my parents thought it would be a good idea if I saw what work was all about... which I thought was a ridiculous idea because I was already working day and night at my own stuff, writing and singing and songwriting; I was also madly involved with my chemistry set of course and with building things and inventing things--just being a kid. they just didn't see that I was working, so they thought I needed a “real job.” Anyway, I go to this job and all of a sudden I was just surrounded by all these strange people and forced to work with them. old ladies, and young guys, and middle aged people, it was insane. And truly shocking. And this one morning we had to be there by like six in the morning or something, and this old lady asked this guy in his twenties, “Good morning Ritchie. How are you this morning?” and his response was “Shitty.” And everyone laughed. Now this is something I will never forget. I mean its been more than fifteen years, and I still look at it as one of those defining moments of my life. I stood there in shock. I looked at the old ladies. Dressed in their McDonalds outfits. I waited for them to react, but they did not seem mad. I had never heard a person curse in front of a lady before, and certainly not in front of an old person. I was just totally shocked. I remember feeling disgusted. Just completely out of my element. I remember thinking to myself how sad and weird and scary it was that this guy would use this word shitty in front of these nice old ladies, and then how weird it was that they didn't seem to mind. This was my introduction to the world of the working classes. I would sit around at our breaks in what they call the ‘break room’ and I would try to talk to everyone about Kierkegaard or Nietzsche or whatever I was reading that week. And no one would ever know what the hell I was talking about. and God did everyone curse all the time. and smoke. Everyone smoked. I remember this one time I was explaining some jean Paul Sartre theories to this one lady during a lunch break---she was probably about fifty years old, and I couldn’t understand why she didn't know what I was talking about—I had just assumed being still a kid, that all adults knew about this stuff, but she didn't and it really freaked me out; she looked at me like I was crazy. I looked at her in that moment and had another one of those defining moments. ‘People that have to work like this do not know about the same things that I do. They do not seem to know about literature or philosophy. I will never forget that moment. It terrified and shocked me. I wondered if it was all adults? Was it just my own parents who were different? What was going on... it would be some time before I understood these differences in the classes.... but it was something that made me very sad. I did not like to see older people working. Or cursing. Or smoking. or suffering. Life began to seem very unfair to me. this was the time of my first big breakdown. Sixteenth birthday. Tons of kids at the house waiting for me. I sat in my room alone and cried for hours. Life was not turning out to be as easy and beautiful and dreamy as I always thought it was. Life as it turned out was kind of sad and unfair for a lot of people. I could not fathom this. it was an unbearable realization...]

So I decided early on that working for other people was not for me. It was everything that I didn't want and refused to accept for my life. By the time I was twenty I had already started tons of my own businesses. Cooper asked me last night, “But how do you get the money to get started?” I looked up at him with fire in my eyes. “You just get the money cooper. It doesn’t matter. You just do it. no matter what you have to do, you do it.” I couldn’t tell him everything. there are things that every entrepreneur in the world knows and understands and that remain simply known and understood and are never spoken aloud. “You just do whatever you have to do to get started. And that's it. you just do it.” I never looked back from then on. I worked day and night. I recounted this to cooper last night. to inspire him. and to reiterate to myself. By the time I was 28 I was well off. I could afford to buy whatever I wanted to. life was good. life was better than good. life was fucking fabulous. but more than that. much more than that, I had freedom. You see, even if you are not rich per se, you have access to cash. So you can start other businesses. One business yields another. and then another. You are not waiting for some paycheck at the end of the week. you are in control of that. he persisted in his fears of “what if we fail though and we owe all this money?” “Who the fuck cares man?” I yell back at him. “So you start over again. Last week bro I signed a note to a bank borrowing seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” His eyes popped out of his head. “You did what?!” “yeah man. Its true. I'm in debt right now somewhere to the tune of 2 million dollars. And if we fail, I mean, if I fail at the various business ventures that I am doing right now then I'm fucked. I mean totally fucked. But bro, if you ask me, nothing is worse than working for someone else.” he just stared at me. and I stared back at him. he had on these old clothes. They weren't even ironed. He sports one of those twenty dollar haircuts. You could go on and on. I was seeing right before my eyes. the difference between working for someone else and being self made. I think this is just the mind of the entrepreneur. I don't know if everyone has this same mindset... but I think I was born with it. or maybe just learned it early on. My mom was self made. my grandparents too. I had watched it growing up. Watching adults go from nothing to something. working two and three jobs while they built their own businesses. My mom God bless her, by the time she was forty became quite wealthy. She went from a very poor and struggling young single mother of two to a person with more money in the bank than any of us knew how to spend in fifteen years. The American dream. Beav and I grew up believing in that dream because we watched her achieve it. So it was only natural that we would do the same thing one day...

This is something that I have learned. A person cannot live the life of true freedom if one is not self employed. You just can’t do it. unless of course you were born rich in which case you have business working for anyone at all, including yourself. it doesn’t mean that its for everyone of course. Some people are just better off working for someone else. but if you are working for someone else, your life is just totally different than those that can work for themselves. If you are self employed it doesn’t mean that you are going to work less than people who work for other people. in fact from what I have experienced, you are going to work a lot more. but you will be working on your own terms at what you want to. you will have freedom like no working person will ever know. You are your own boss. It is a thing of fucking beauty that is almost unmatched. This kind of freedom

But I have learned something else too. working for other people is easier in a way. you don't need as much motivation or initiation or inspiration or ideas or genius or will or even too much discipline. Sure all of that plays a part, but basically your job is just to do your job. That's it. Someone else is calling the shots, telling you what to do. your job is to listen. You do your job. And do a good job. And at the end of the week you will get a paycheck. Working for yourself is different than that. it takes a lot of guts. And a lot of ideas and a lot of overtime. You are constantly competing. You are constantly stretching yourself. Thinking of new ideas. Trying to make IT happen. Brainstorming. There might not be a pay check at the end of every week, for months or even years, you may not see that paycheck that your friends are getting every week who have regular jobs. And so that's the risk. That's the scary part. I've seen this too.

Here is another thing that is related. It is subtle. There is something that many people do not understand but it is the secret of the entrepreneurial class. All businesses that are out there are just businesses that someone started one day. someone just like you and me. all businesses. All companies. They're all just something that someone got the idea for one day and decided to create. Everything we use. Everything we touch. Everything we consume. Everything we walk into. Everything we buy or eat or drink. They are all just extensions of someone's idea at one time. And now they are making money with it. if you get this point, you start to get goose bumps all over your body like I have now. its intoxicating. You do not need to drink if you start thinking about business. it is a high all its own. I don't know what is more intoxicating. The idea of making all the money, or having the freedom, or the ability to use your creativity and profit from it...

I need to take a break...

There are other things. Lots of other things. One thing that really took a long time to hammer into me, into Cleo too. But I think we finally got it. Just because you are nice to people does not mean they will be nice to you. in fact, often times if you are a nice person you will have to be very careful not to show how nice you are to others. I understand now that there is a golden rule. But it is not the golden rule they teach you when we are children. The golden rule is this: Most people will fuck over another person in order to save or profit themselves. This isn't all people, but most. Almost all of them. and if you are one of the nice ones. If you are one of the ones who aren't this way, and there are very few, this will be a lesson that will be very hard for you to learn. It was for me. I didn't even start to get it till recently.

We hear this all the time, but we don't believe it. we don't want to. it’s a horrible thought. But unfortunately its true. People will lie to you. right to your face. And in the next minute they will act friendly to you as if nothing is wrong. People have this in them. I don't know how or why this is. But its true. They will cheat you, deceive you, steal from you, lie right to your face and still act like they are your friend or like everything is a-o.k. it’s a creepy thing. it is the accident that is humanity. It is a glitch in our wiring. And if you are not one of those people, you will feel fucked by this a lot, because you won't know how to deal with it. most people are afraid of the truth, so they just won't utter it a lot. But after a while you will start to get used to it. now I realize, I understand, that the nicer you act to most people, the more they notice it, and the more they notice that they can get away with.

You want to get everything you want? Be a hardass. Be it in a nice way of course. But the harder you are, the more respectful people will be. the more timely they will be. the more reliable they will be. Weird. But true. the meek have never inherited the earth. The only people who have gotten anything of the earth, even a little piece of it, are the meanest and cruelest, most selfish, greedy people throughout our history. Every little piece of earth that is owned right now, all over the globe, every country in the world, was stolen from someone else. Every country was conquered by a stronger smarter more vicious and cruel people. Golden rule? Yep. Golden rule. People will fuck you, lie to you, steal from you, attack you, whatever they have to do, to profit, or save themselves. I have seen this time and time again.

More? Yeah more. The weaker you are, the more people will take advantage of you. Again, it’s a glitch. You wouldn’t think it was this way. but it is. you would think people would want to help. But they don't. And I'm not talking about everyone. Just the majority of the humans that are on the earth now. There is a small percentage that are just totally different. Its as if they are more evolved. They’ve moved on. But they're pretty minor. [Remember the old tip that if you’re in trouble don't yell ‘help!’ or ‘rape!’ because no one will come to help you, but what we’re supposed to do instead is yell “fire!” and that will get people to actually pay attention. I remember hearing this as a kid and thinking it was so weird...] Think about people who are rich or famous. They get everything for free. And they can afford to pay for anything they want to. But then someone who doesn’t have any money, people just treat them like shit. Most people won't help them. People that are poor like this can’t get health insurance. They can’t get jobs. They can’t get housing. They can barely get food. They get no respect. They get no compassion. In fact most people will look at poor people in need disrespectfully.... they will try to hide from it. Run from it. I notice it in myself. We are all fascinated by wealth and disgusted by poverty. A rich and famous man walks into a restaurant and gets treated like gold, gets a free meal, free drinks, just for walking in. A poor man living on the street tries to get a free burger from McDonalds and gets the cops called on him. Go figure. We’re fucked. If man was made in god’s image... you finish it.