Hurricane Katrina to a family emergency, to the profound choices we have to make in life, I’ve found that a good plan is to first recognize the problem, then stabilize the situation, organize the response, then respond. Aware that I needed more as.
All I want is what I can see, all I can see is in front of me.
It’s a matter of how we see the challenge in front of us and how we engage with it. Persist, pivot, or concede. It’s up to us, our choice every time.
Good looks don’t cook the dinner, but they’ll get you a seat at the table, and I was determined to take advantage of any seat I could get.
I also made The Newton Boys with my old friend who gave me my first shot in this business, Richard Linklater. It was about an outlaw gang of brothers who were the most successful train and bank robbers in history. The man I portrayed was “Willis Newton,” who was from my hometown of Uvalde, Texas. One of the originators of outlaw logic, he’d rather shoot the lock than use a key any day.
I learned resilience, consequences, responsibility, and how to work hard.
Both of these red lights forced us inward, literally quarantined us to search our souls for a better way forward. In doing so, we took inventory of our lives and who we are in them – what we care about, what our priorities are, what matters.
When we know what we want to do, knowing when to do it is the hard part. Get em early so you don’t have to get em as often. Prevent before the cure, habilitate before the re.
It was a time when I was often more concerned with not running red lights than I was with investing in the greenlights.
They taught me not to hate.
I’ve just learned how to scrape it off my boots and carry on.
As individuals, we unite in our values.
I’ve earned a few scars getting through this rodeo of humanity. I’ve been good at it, I’ve been not so good at it, and ultimately, I’ve found some pleasure in all of it, either way.
Then I realize I am responsible for fate, fiction is truthful, a sinner and saint I am, an egotistical utilitarian as well. I’ll be mortal forever.
You’re gonna love it, buddy, it is your kinda town. You can walk into anywhere in your flip-flops, have a seat at a bar, and you’ll have a cowboy to the right of you, a lesbian to your left, an Indian on the other side, and a midget tendin bar. All you gotta be is yourself in that town.
We become voyagers in those moments because we let them become bigger than us, and in doing so, we just become less involved in it and more impressed with it.
I’ve never felt like a victim. I have a lot of proof that the world is conspiring to make me happy. I’ve always gotten away with more in life than in my dreams.
Sometimes we find our frequency by holding on to a moral bottom line in the midst of chaos. Sometimes we find it by breaking the rules and running the red light to get home.
All destruction eventually leads to construction, all death eventually leads to birth, all pain eventually leads to pleasure. In this life or the next, what goes down will come up.
A denied expectation hurts more than a denied hope, while a fulfilled hope makes us happier than a fulfilled expectation. Hope’s got a higher return on happiness and less debit on denial, it’s just not as measurable. My parents measured.