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Music famous is fast, current, and immediate. It’s quick-burning, and hard to sustain. But when you touch someone’s heart with music, it’s forever. Once one of your songs fuses with an experience in somebody’s life, there’s damn near nothing that could break that bond.
But some stories penetrate; they get past our defenses and plunge into our secret spaces, bypassing our brains and inducing physical reactions: tears, chills, laughter, gasps. They light us up, creating ecstatic pleasure; they inspire us; they make us want to strive. Great stories illuminate truth,
Many people don’t realize this, but the Taj Mahal is a single mausoleum, designed, constructed, and maintained for one woman: Mumtaz Mahal, the favorite wife of Emperor Shah Jahan. The emperor was so distressed by the death of his beloved that he commissioned the construction of the Taj Mahal. He preserved her body for the more than twenty years it took to build (from 1632 to 1653); he spent thirty-two million rupees (nearly a billion dollars in today’s currency), and employed twenty thousand of the world’s greatest artisans, imported Italian marble (which was not an easy thing to do in
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saw the realization of my dream as my only road to love and happiness. Failure equaled death.
Muhammad Ali, at the height of his fame and fortune—and in the prime years of his athletic capabilities—gave up everything to oppose the war in Vietnam. He refused induction into the US Army on religious grounds as a conscientious objector, and in 1967, Ali was convicted of “draft evasion” and sentenced to five years in prison. His passport was seized; he was heavily fined; and he was punished with a three-year ban from boxing. I ain’t draft dodging. I ain’t burning no flag. I ain’t running to Canada. I’m staying right here. You want to send me to jail? Fine, you go right ahead. I’ve been in
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That’s how Ali was. He was always trying to create something that would make you smile forever. He knew he was Muhammad Ali; he knew what that meant to people; and there was no length he was unwilling to go to in order to autograph your heart with a loving memory.
“When situations get hot, you can’t rely on yo’ thinkin’ mind. You must have habituated reflexive responses that kick in without the necessity of thought. Never de-train your killer instincts.”
Nelson Mandela has invited us to dinner,” JL said, in his regular-ass JL voice. I couldn’t even respond.
the always-positive reaction was about people’s deep recognition and reverence for a life lived in integrity. In the face of grievous injustice, profound prejudice, and financial devastation, he never wavered from the convictions of his principles.
“Never underestimate the power of what you do.”
(Africa side note #1: Mike ultimately trained into the best shape of his life, and thank God, because as great a writer as he is, as a videographer, he failed bad: One time on safari we were chased by an elephant, and Mike was so terrified he couldn’t pick the camera up, and all we got was the audio . . . of Mike screaming, and Charlie Mack saying “That’s a motherfuckin’ elephant!” eleven times in a row.)
Africa side note #3: Jorge told us he wanted to move to the United States. We told him, “Sure, Jorge, if you get there, we got you.” Six months after Ali wrapped, Jorge appeared in Los Angeles; he moved in with Pierce, and I financed a cleaning company that he owned and operated for five years, until he felt he had gathered sufficient business knowledge to return and build in his native Mozambique. We finance the trucking company that he owns and operates to this day.)
Purpose and desire can seem similar, but they are very different, sometimes even opposing forces.
I am a dreamer, and a builder. I picture grand visions, and then I build the systems to make them real in the world. That is my love language.
It’s impossible to build something that is of a higher quality than the quality of the people around you.
In retrospect, I can see the truth: Jada was faced with a horrific reality, and there was no version of her leaving her six-year-old son without his mother on his first movie gig. Jada turned down Guns N’ Roses.
“I’m finished, Daddy!” she gushed, with so much glee that I almost missed what she’d said. “What you say, Bean?” “I said I’m finished, Daddy—I’m ready to go home.” “Well, yeah, you’re finished for a few days, sweetie, but really you just started. You have a few more weeks to go,” I said in the standard parental not-taking-my-kid-seriously tone. “No, no, Daddy, I’m finished.”
“It doesn’t matter to you that I’m done, Daddy?” Willow said. “Well, of course it matters, baby, but you can’t be done.”
“Mommy? “Yes, sweetie?” “It’s so sad,” Willow said. “What is, honey?” “Daddy has a picture of a family in his mind. And it’s not us!”
Nobody cares what you think and what you feel. They care what they think and what they feel. That’s why they said it.
How much you’re willing to change will prove to them how much you love them.
And then, the individual greatest words I’ve ever heard from Jaden’s mouth: “Can someone go get my dad, please?” It makes me teary every time I think about it. I had transformed our relationship; I had purified his perception of me;
When I grew up, I knew I had a lion, but I hated that sometimes he’d bite me.
To place the responsibility for your happiness on anybody other than yourself is a recipe for misery.
I’m not sure why I said it like that—I think I may be a drama queen. I love the shock value and the amusing bullshittery of tattooing a sentence on someone’s memory.
But I did not know how to stop, or be still, or be quiet, or alone. I’m addicted to the approval of others, and to secure their approval, I became addicted to winning. And to guarantee and sustain my stream of massive victories, I became addicted to working, to grinding, and obsessively pursuing perfection.
I had never liked vampire movies, but I suddenly understood their mythology—they are a metaphor for insatiable human hunger, unquenchable thirsts, and chronic dissatisfaction—the attempt to fill a spiritual hole with external things.
“Don’t fight it, man,” Scoty says. “It’s a flow. It’ll carry yuh out, but it’ll bring you back.”
The ebb and flow of the tide is the heartbeat of the planet. When they sit in the ocean all day, they are tuning themselves in to the frequency of the earth. This alignment, to Scoty, was the highest human experience. When he spends time with anyone he loves, he wants to spend it in the ocean—surfing, fishing, boating, water-skiing, swimming, reconnectin’, and limin’.
Why are you so afraid of silence? Silence is the root of everything. If you spiral into its void a hundred voices will thunder messages you long to hear. —Rumi
Isso aqui foi pra mim, foi pessoal
I discovered that there’s a name for this condition: trichotillomania, a.k.a. hair-pulling disorder. I knew I didn’t have it, but there was always day eight!
Day eleven, I gave up meditation. It literally felt like my mind was attacking me.
If I was funny enough, sweet enough, harmless enough, entertaining enough, then I wouldn’t be hurt, my mother would be safe, and my family would be happy—no one would ever leave me.
Basically, when I had suppressed my real needs so thoroughly for so long, and still didn’t get the adoration and approval I’d sought, my anguish would express itself as the General.
It was excruciating trying to stop saying yes when I meant no, and to stop saying no to things that I actually wanted.
There is an energy that’s at work while you’re asleep—the energy that fires the sun, that moves the ocean, that beats your heart. You don’t have to do everything; in fact, most of the things that get done, you didn’t have anything to do with them. Actually, it’s a great thing that you were asleep, because if you’d been awake, you would probably have messed it up.
We disagreed about everything; I was incensed by her pessimism, and she, in turn, scorned my optimism. It never dawned on either of us to just talk to other people. I guess we kinda used each other to crash-test our theories about life. We knew the other would never easily agree, so when an idea got past, we knew it was a keeper.
“Stop talking.” She said it so many times I wanted to bang my head on the floor. She was referring to the constant inner chatter that runs incessantly in my head—planning, strategizing, debating, assessing, critiquing, self-judging, questioning, doubting. She pummeled me with the phrase, thousands of times: “Stop talking.” And at some point, just before sunrise, I noticed it: silence. My inner roommates had stopped talking. It was euphoric.
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying lays out the most critical tenets to supporting and soothing the transition of a dying loved one. The first idea that jumped off the page for me was that a dying person often needs “permission to die.” The book posits that sometimes a dying person will fight and struggle to stay alive if they don’t have the sense that you are going to be OK without them. This can create horrific and painful final days. In order for our loved one to let go and die peacefully, they need to be explicitly reassured that we’re going to be OK after they are gone, that they did a
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Thank God we’re judged by our actions, not by our trauma-driven, inner outbursts.
Hellos and goodbyes should be that way in our everyday lives because the reality is tomorrow is not promised. I began to embrace every hello with gratitude and to never take a goodbye for granted.
We agreed that we were both imperfect people, doing our best to figure out how to be in this world joyfully. What we needed from each other was unconditional love and support—not judgment, not punishment, but total, unbending devotion to each other’s growth and well-being.
for some reason, God placed the most beautiful things in life on the other side of our worst terrors. If we are not willing to stand in the face of the things that most deeply unnerve us, and then step across the invisible line into the land of dread, then we won’t get to experience the best that life has to offer.
His biggest fear is having any fears.
Quincy Jones: Happy 50, bro.
No paralysis through analysis
Look, I’m either gonna die, or I’m not. If God wants me today, ain’t nothin’ I can do about it anyway. If I die, I’m not even gonna know. So, the real question is, how do I want to live?
