#007 - The Nastiest Thing I Was Ever Told
I didn’t know who Rodney Mullen was until last month. In case you don’t know either, he’s the most influential skateboarder who ever lived. Tony Hawk was objectively better and infinitely more popular, but Mullen invented all the trick street skateboarders do. While that might not seem very impressive, remember the great majority of skateboarders are street skateboarders. Hawk is The Beatles, but Mullen is The Who. He matters a lot, but only to people who really fucking care about what he does.
Of course, I’ve been obsessed with Rodney Mullen for two months now. Reading every article he was namedropped in. Going through hours of interview with him on YouTube and various podcasts. I even bought his biography, but I haven’t read it yet. He said a lot of things I really liked, but one thing I loved in particular on Tom Bilyeu’s sometimes great, sometimes corny YouTube show Impact Theory: embrace your pain. Use it to become great at something you love. It will sound either self-explanatory or bonkers to you.
It’s a very common thing to fall for public figures who validate your way of understanding the world. I mean, Fox News has exploited this psychological fallacy to nurture political division for over twenty years. But there’s also a redeeming quality to find out someone who found success and legacy by thinking the same way you do. It makes you realized that you’re not living your life wrong. No one will ever tell you that, but if you’re looking for footsteps to follow, odds are that you will find them.
Because my own pain has been the motor behind everything I do. Whether it’s self-destructive or self-affirming. But if I consciously conjure fucked up emotions, I gain super powers of will, courage and resilience. It sounds fucked up and it’s temporary, but it works.
For example, I’ve reminded myself at least once a month for the last twenty-five years the nastiest thing I was ever told. I was fifteen and walking to a shop class. I might’ve been heckling this guy I didn’t like or not. I don’t quite remember, but I think that I did. You don’t get told shit like that unprompted. He was a self-satisfied type of dude who thought that if you love yourself enough, you don’t need friends. Your own company should be enough. I didn’t think like that then and he didn’t even believe his own bullshit.
We both really cared about how we came across to popular kids. We just had different philosophies on how to act on it. I tried to please. He played aloof. We were both fifteen. None of this was very smart. He told me casually in that hallway: "You’re the most talentless person I know. You literally can’t do anything" and walked away with that stupid, self-satisfied smile on his face. His barb was rehearsed and it hit the target at full speed. It also turned out to be one of the most important moments of my life.
I decided that he was wrong.
Because he was not wrong, but his comment was unfair and cruel. I did not know how to do anything or even what I was good at. I spent my time trying to survive physically and emotionally to high school and it was difficult enough. I did not learn that on the spot, but this encounter taught me that people experience life-changing moments at different parts of their lives and that is OK. Some people find themselves at twelve. Others at thirty-five. Some find themselves early and lose themselves early.
He sure shit lost himself early. After college, he became a cop and got fired from the force for selling privileged information for money and tricking his colleagues into starting a criminal investigation on false pretenses. In the meantime, I was learning enough martial arts to kick his ass, getting a master degree, falling in love with the woman of my dreams and developing my writing skills. By 2017, he was out of work and pleading to stay out of prison while I was getting my swanky day job.
I thought about that fucker for twenty-five years, but this murderous, premeditated barb turned out to be a great gift. It revealed to me that I had a super power. A fire to that I could fuel in order to gain endless motivation. That isn’t his fault. His only intention was to crush me. But that guy picked the wrong fucking number. He told. me the nastiest thing I was ever told and it was the very last time I let someone talk that way to me. I had decided it was the bottom. That it was enough.
It structured my life in two parts : before and after hearing that shit. But I survived and became better. Tougher.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you how to feel about yourself. No matter how real and accurate it feels, it’s always in your power to make a liar out of anyone who wants to put you down. The first day of the rest of your life is always today. Don’t take shit. There is a furnace in your gut that burns it down and feeds you up with energy. I thought for years that I was weird for functioning this way, but I kept up because it worked. But Rodney Mullen showed me I wasn’t alone. He showed that I could go on for as long as I feel.
