I Can't Make This Up: Life Lessons

by Kevin Hart

So what are you to do in the face of a reality that can be indifferent, cold, even cruel? All you can do is play the odds. If you choose to give up, you can be fairly certain that life will pass you by. But if you choose to try your best, you can at least tip the balance significantly in your favor. Life is not about the result—we all have the same outcome in the end. Life is about the effort you put into it. And I wasn’t putting effort into my craft anymore. After months of sp...

Then there are the hustlers who work outside the business, like Terrence Lock. Na’im introduced me to him. He was booking gigs for a few other comedians on the scene, and he started pursuing me as a client. You look these kinds of hustlers in the eye and you know you shouldn’t trust them. But you start listening to their words, and they say exactly what you want to hear, and you see that they can make anything happen by flapping their mouth, so you forget about your first instinct and decide to trust them anyway.

Some nights, I had to wait until Torrei was asleep before going to bed, because I was worried that she’d try to harm me in my sleep.

Those movies had come and gone, but each one had captured a few fans. That, I recognized, was more valuable than a holding deal, because a true fan pays dividends for life. So if at every show I could pick up a few more fans, then leaving Hollywood to tour might turn out to be the best possible thing I could do for my film career: I could overcome the stigma of being a proven failure by becoming too popular for the entertainment business to deny. I needed to build myself a following so big that, instead of worrying that saying yes to me or one of my projects was a mistake, the gatekeepers would worry that saying no was a mistake.

Desperation is the best motivator there is. If I hadn’t sunk so low, I wouldn’t have been willing to work so hard. But I was happy busting my ass on the road. We were creating a business that was completely ours.

Here’s a life lesson: If you’re having problems in your relationship, getting married or having children is not going to solve them. It’s just going to create new problems. This may be common sense to most intelligent human beings. It wasn’t to me. So I continued to learn it the hard way.

The writers even incorporated a bunny into the script. It was more proof that only your mother thinks you’re special; to all other people, you look the same as everyone else unless you make the effort to stand out—and that effort is always worth it.

I’d never lost a loved one before, but I noticed that I processed it differently than everyone else in my family. I knew that my mom had wanted to stop suffering, and her wish had been granted. It was only us, those left behind, who were still suffering. And we had just two choices: to stop living or to go on living. It was strange to travel back to Australia after the funeral and see that nothing had changed: Airport security still yelled about traveling with liquids. The plane still smelled like old carpet. Couples still kissed and bickered and ignored each other. The sky was still blue. The movie crew was still scurrying around, coordinating the same tiny details through their radios. Everything was different for me, but in the world, everything was the same. When you mourn, when you hurt, when someone you love—or everyone you love—passes, it may feel like a void has opened up in your universe. But in the universe, energy can never be destroyed. So if the pain and the absence existed only in my mind, then it wasn’t real. It was imaginary, and me being hurt or angry about it wasn’t going to change anything. There was nothing I could do except let go of a tragic story and embrace one that served me—and her—better. So I did. I chose not to lose my mom, and instead to gain an angel. In my mind, my heart, and my life, she is still completely present to this day—and as wise, compassionate, and stubborn as ever.

Waiting for other people to make your dreams come true is like waiting for a bus on a corner where there’s no bus stop. Sometimes the bus driver may feel bad for you and stop anyway, but usually he’ll speed right past and leave you standing there like an idiot.

When someone dies in your family, traditionally there’s a period of mourning. This is generally followed by a period of amazement. This period begins when you start going through the possessions of the deceased. Sometimes the amazement is positive: “Oh my God, Dad’s Coke bottle collection is worth a million dollars!” Sometimes the amazement is negative: “Oh my God, Dad’s wanted by the FBI!” And sometimes it’s just confusing: “Oh my God, why does Dad have three boxes full of pubic hair?” In our case, we experienced all three kinds of amazement.

Comedy Central ended up buying I’m a Grown Little Man for fifty thousand dollars, which, after commissions, allowed me to pay off some of my expenses and debt. Though I was proud of the work, the special didn’t explode into the world like I’d hoped. It came and went like everything else I’d done. I was just another comic with an hour-long special—and a DVD and CD to sell at my merchandise table. But I was fine with this outcome, because by now, I’d come to accept that endurance is key. If I stayed persistent and on my grind, I would make it out of this hole and my dreams would come true. I just didn’t know when.

Shortcuts may get you there quicker, but all the experience you gain on the long road allows you to stay there once you arrive.

We were in Vegas complaining about our relationships and drinking tequila out of red plastic cups—the ones that are always stacked next to the free alcohol at parties. I suggested that we all run away and move to Jamaica together. As we toasted to that, Harry burst out: “We the Plastic Cup Boyz!” “What the hell is that?” Spank asked. “Nigga, we always got plastic cups. When you see these red cups, it’s always a party or a good time. So we the Plastic Cup Boyz.” I was tired of saying I was bringing my “crew” or my “team” or my “package” to each club. We needed a name. So from that day forward, we were the Plastic Cup Boyz and Nate had a new responsibility: making sure we had red plastic cups everywhere we went.

Communication is the key that unlocks a plan. Everyone should know your intentions at all times, as well as any changes to them. A good idea with bad communication is as useful as a phone with a dead battery.

Do your best, always. Because you never know who’s watching. As Curtis Mayfield once said, “It may not come when you want it to, but when it does, it’s right on time.”

The lesson learned from all this is that if you’re not careful, your dick will get you into relationships that your head can’t fix. But the deeper lesson is that what’s important in a relationship is the bricks that every one of your words and actions lay down, because together they add up to the home that you’re going to live in for quite some time. Brick by brick, I’d built an unstable house with Torrei, one that was doomed to collapse. But the experience enabled us to build great homes afterward for our kids, our partners, and ourselves.

“We don’t rest after a success.” I lifted my red plastic cup and put an arm around the woman I was with. Her name was Eniko. “We raise our goals.” We toasted to many more years of brotherhood. Then the promoter asked me: “Is that your wife?”

The main thing that’s important to me with this is that when I leave the stage, people know who I am and what made me.”

If people are saying critical things about you, it means you’re worth talking about. And if they’re wrong about you, even better, because it means you’re worth making stuff up about.

Then again, I’d gotten this far by being willing to stretch myself. Around the time you’re eighteen, nature stops the process of growing in your body. So if you want to keep growing after that, you have no choice but to stretch yourself on your own and increase your thinking, your capabilities, and your accomplishments. It’s a scary thing to take the risks and make the sacrifices necessary to keep growing, but it’s better than living a life in which you don’t fulfill your potential. The worst-case scenario is that it doesn’t work. The best-case scenario is that it does. Whatever happens, life goes on and so does the laughter.

He began by telling me that he’d been following my career and was aware of everything I’d been doing. Then he made his pitch, but it was all hypothetical statements, vague promises, and future hype: “This is gonna be real big, and if you wanna be part of this, I got you.” In these situations, I don’t necessarily focus on what someone says. I look at who they are. And Will seemed to have a lot of attributes that I shared, things that had gotten me to where I was. He was a people person. He was passionate and dedicated to his craft. He seemed like a hard worker. And, like me, there was nothing he felt he couldn’t handle or do.

I arrived at the signing drunk and belligerent, and sat behind a folding table. A woman made her way over with a baby in one hand and a DVD in another. “Hurry it up, mama, I don’t got all day,” I snapped. She approached nervously. I quickly signed her DVD, then shouted, “Now get that ugly baby outta here!” I’d lost the ability to censor myself. To a guy who was lingering at the table: “C’mon, man, nobody wants to talk to you. Go back to your park bench.” To a woman who was taking a photo with me: “Get your arm off of me, lady. You look diseased.” And the next person: “Look at those goddamned pants. I’m not signing no DVD for nobody wearing those stupid-ass pants. Take them off and go to the back of the line.” Eniko kept trying to calm me down, but the fans just thought I was doing my act. “Oh, man, that Kevin’s so funny! He’s crazy!” I wish we’d taped that signing. It could have been the next special: Laugh at My Drunkenness.

After all the meetings, all the offers, all the let’s-make-a-deals and we-want-to-be-in-the-Kevin-Hart-businesses and our-lawyers-will-call-your-lawyers, I decided to work with a true closer—not just someone who would throw money or a good script at me but someone who was willing to fight every step of the way to get a project made, released, and properly promoted. Someone whose work ethic I personally trusted: Will Packer. Why end a relationship that’s working and growing? Will believed in me when I wasn’t number one at the box office, and that was something I would never get to experience in a new relationship again. In the meantime, there were a lot of other new things to experience on this ride. Everything was flying by at warp speed.

What’s harder than achieving success is achieving consistent success. But what’s even harder than achieving consistent success is achieving consistently bigger successes. The reverberations of that second concert film took me to the next level, because now I was respected not just in comedy circles and Hollywood circles but in business circles.

I tell my kids that working hard earns you the right to play hard. No matter what happened in this intense period of my life, work always came first. But just because you work smart doesn’t give you the right to play stupid. And I played stupid. Real stupid. I could have lost everything I’d worked for because of one mistake I kept making and not learning from.

When I talk of my accomplishments and my work ethic, it is so that she will hear, and smile, knowing that all the hardship she suffered to keep me from throwing my life away was not in vain.

So much ignorance comes from a lack of experience, and these trips showed me that we are all brothers and sisters—and we need to always remember that. Because if one person is hurting, then we are all hurting.

This simple gift has brought me to places I never expected to go, given me just about everything I have, and taught me most of what I know. But only because I never gave up on it. Everybody wants success in something, whether it’s in work, love, play, finances, family, or an inner struggle. But success doesn’t come instantly. Life has a process of rejecting you to test you and prepare you to win. Steve Harvey lived in his Ford Tempo and showered in gas stations when he couldn’t get enough comedy gigs to cover his rent. Halle Berry slept in a homeless shelter in New York when she was auditioning to become an actress. Even James Cameron, one of the richest directors in Hollywood, was reduced to living out of his car when he was trying to sell the screenplay for The Terminator. The list goes on and on.

How you handle rejection is very similar to how you’ll handle success. If you’re strong enough to handle rejection without taking it personally, without holding a grudge, and without losing your passion and drive, then you’ll be strong enough to reap the rewards. But if you’re too weak to handle failure and disappointment, then you’re too weak to handle success, which will only end up damaging your life and happiness. If life is a struggle, then struggle. If you get rejected, get rejected again. If your dreams are smashed, keep dreaming. Just keep your eyes on the prize—and always remember that you have to fail to win.

Growing up, the best thing I ever had was nothing.

Success is not an excuse to stop; it’s a reason to move the goalposts farther out and accelerate. There is no destination, just a journey. And that journey is to keep building on top of what I’m building.

I willed the dream I had at eighteen years old, before I ever discovered comedy, to come true: I’m finally working for Nike. If you grind hard enough and stay true to yourself, all your dreams will come true—even the ones you’ve forgotten about. This book is not the story of my life—it is the story of my foundation. The construction of my life is still in progress.

If you don’t believe in your own greatness, no one else will. You’re limited only by your doubts, your fears, and your desire to fit in rather than stand out. And there’s room in this world for all of us to stand out.