May 31, 2008

More Than Drunken Stories

Tucker Max wrote this.

If you haven't realized it by now, you will realize soon enough that a lot of people out there tiptoe through their lives, unsure of who they are or what they want, blindly following the dictates of society, never truly finding themselves or their calling, until they arrive quietly at their death.

I refuse to tiptoe through life and arrive quietly at my death. I decided a long time ago that I would not be one of those guys. That no matter how much effort or pain or sacrifice it took, I refused to settle. I refused to not actively take part in my life, instead of just going with the flow and finding myself in a place where I looked up and thought "I am so unhappy with my life. How did I get here?"

But here's the thing: It is very easy to get there without realizing how you got there. Maybe our culture does a poor job of making its youth understand that getting life right is very hard. It requires a lot of skills to be a success, more than anything, it demands that you be two things: determined to find a path to your personal success, and courageous enough to take it, despite the consequences. Think to yourself: How many people do you know that you can really describe that way? Not many.

That's the bad news. The good news is that its a choice. Success truly is a choice. Every single day, with every single action and every single decision, you pick your own path. Do you read something that educates you instead of watching your tenth Seinfeld run-run? Thats a choice. Do you go to the gym like you want to, or do you just drink a Diet Coke and sit on the sofa? That's a choice. Do you go start writing like you've always said you wanted to, or do you just put it off for another day? That is a choice. Every day you make hundreds of thse choices, and when you are 40 and look up to find yourself in a shitty life that you don't like, you have no one to blame but yourself.
I have never agreed with anything he's written more. Except for maybe the Absinthe Donuts Story.