Comes A Time

Comes a time in a man's life when he has to make a decision.
Not everybody gets there. Most people don't. The numbness it takes to negotiate life most often kills the ability to make a stand. A sense of hopelessness is drilled into people as they ride the bumpy road, and change is no longer an option because it cannot even be conceived.
The rich and privileged get to try on persona. Take some time off to reinvent themselves. Try a new look. Try a new approach. Experiment with how to deal with the world until they find a personality that fits. Think David Bowie.
Everybody should have this opportunity. The wee folk are forced into roles before they are ready to accept them, then they become trapped by responsibility. Their souls cry out for change until they become mute. And the original personailty, the real human, gets lost in the shuffle, obscured by an actor's role.
Comes a time in a man's life when he has to decide to stop eating shit and start dishing it out.
The heart and soul have to be aligned to make this real. You cannot fake it.
The typical pattern is to become furious when your life is under attack. Resolve to change. Put up a fight.
But you procrastinate because you don't know exactly what you should do. Procrastination is death because, given time, life will once again beat you into submission. It doesn't take long and the anger is gone. This happens over and over and over again.
Unless you act immediately. Use the anger as fuel against fear. You have to be prepared. Your experiences and conscious self, your needs and desires, your understanding of who you truly are, these must all be buzzing inside you simultaneously. Your unconscious self has to make its presence felt. The truth.
You have to be at the right place. Because it will take everything you got. The world and everybody in it wants to beat you down. Change throws people off balance. They put you in a box when they meet you, and they have to keep you there to keep their tiny world in balance. Show them a different side and they will fight tooth and nail to back you into that box. Because now they have to pay attention to you. They can't just sit back and ignore the stereotype they helped to create.
And nobody wants to have to think about you. They want only to think of themselves.
Comes a time in a man's life when he has to decide to live without fear.
Your essence cannot shine until you become fearless. When you don't give a damn what any living human being thinks about who you are, what you say, how you think, what you wear; then you have become fearless.
When you can make the important decisions of your life unafraid of the consequences; then you have become fearless. You cannot be afraid to lose a job or take a pay cut; you cannot be afraid of what the boss might think. You cannot compromise your true self for any reason under any circumstance. That is the definition of fearless.
Just like that. A small phrase that has always fascinated me with its power. He changed dramatically, just like that. He changed his life, just like that. His attitude, his perspective, his approach is a whole new thing. And it changed just like that.
It suggests enormous change in a split second.
The truth is vastly different. The truth is that when a human has had enough and is strong enough, his spirit bursts forth. In response to one final indignation, one last insult, one last situation that tips the scale to infinitely unacceptable.
A response that has been building for decades. But appears to happen just like that.
Still, I like the perception. Just like that. Boom.
Comes a time in a man's life, if he has anything left in the tank, when he has to rise up and fight. For the pure dignity of it.
They say you have to pick your fights. I think fighting to be who you are regardless of petty criticism from small minds, is the right fight. I think fighting to live your life in a way that expresses and satisfies your soul regardless of opposition from those of limited intelligence, is the right fight.
Hunter S. Thompson used to say "Never apologize, never explain." Words to live by. Because apologizing and explaining put you on your knees, which is where everyone around you wants you to be.
Comes a time in a man's life when he has to believe in himself without question.