CHAPTER 14
“FUCK THIS” BEFORE “FUCK YOU”
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of
avoiding reality.
~ Ayn Rand, Author
THE BEGINNING OF THE END: THE “FUCK THIS” EVENT (FTE)
E
ver since
The Matrix
was released in 1999, the “red pill” has become symbolic
for many things: transformation, awakening, knowledge, freedom, and the not so
obvious, the painful road of unplugging from ordinary. As much as I’d like to be
writing about rainbows, I cannot. Jim Rohn, the legendary motivational speaker,
once said, “We must all suffer one of two things: the
pain of discipline or the
pain of regret.” At some point, you will face the same choice: a life
in
hell, a
SCRIPTED
hyperreality fated by the treadmill of mediocrity; or a walk
through
hell, the
red-pill reality of discipline, unpaid sacrifice, and dang it, a ton of
failure.
The “fuck this” event (FTE) is your first step into this hell.
And no, it won’t be a leisurely stroll through a blooming wheat field with a
triumphant Hans Zimmer melody orchestrating the background. Cigars won’t be
lit and champagne won’t be popping. Instead, the “fuck this” event is a traumatic
moment, epiphanic, and painful. It’s a pejorative mental breakthrough, one that
sounds like any of the following: “No more!” “I’ve had it!” or “I can’t live like
this!” The FTE smacks you when the pain of the status
quo finally exceeds the
anticipated pain of its escape—the point of no return where nothing else matters.
If awareness was a slow boil leading to this book, the FTE is a sudden flash burn
of WTFU and GTFO.
In a June 2014 essay penned for
Worth
magazine, Mohamed El-Erian
explained his reasoning behind his resignation as CEO of the investment firm
PIMCO. In his essay, he cited his daughter for the reason. When El-Erian asked
his daughter why she wouldn’t brush her teeth and do as told, she produced a list
of twenty-two milestones her father missed due to his workload. From her first
day at school to a first soccer match to a Halloween parade,
the list was
exhaustive, enough to cause El-Erian to rethink his priorities. He wrote, “Talk
about a wake-up call… I felt awful and got defensive: I had a good excuse for
each missed event! Travel, important meetings, an urgent phone call, sudden to-
dos… But it dawned on me that I was missing an infinitely more important
point.”
26
Unfortunately, and unlike Mr. El-Erian, your FTE won’t be accompanied by
a $100 million nest egg and a twenty-two-point list from your ten-year-old
daughter but something more disruptive. Like
a curt letter from human
resources that euphemistically says, “Thank you for the last fifteen years, but
your services are no longer required; security will escort you out of the building.”
The FTE could come from a rickety cot with a spring piercing your spine: you’re
stranded by weather at an airport thousands of miles away from home, a
revelation that once again, your child lacks a
father and your wife lacks a
husband. And let’s hope your FTE doesn’t come from an oncologist’s office: a
negative biopsy, a relieved reminder that you have one life and it might be over
quicker than expected.
While my “fuck this” event was more than twenty years ago, it forever seared
my mind. I was twenty-six, four years removed from college and working as a
chauffeur in Chicago. My workday started like the other six days before it. It was
an ungodly hour for a morning drop at O’Hare Airport. This morning was
worse.
The client for tow was Ruth Stafford, an old leathery
hag from the Hillary
Clinton school of fashion—she wore the same burgundy floral pantsuit on every
trip. I’d guess Ruth deployed this ensemble no matter the occasion. Funeral?
Wedding? Jazzercise? Floral pantsuit. We nicknamed the perpetual-pantsuit lady
“Ruth STIFFord” because she’d tip one dollar, regardless of conditions. Drive
Ruth through a nuclear apocalypse or the eye of a hurricane and, well, enjoy your
buck, kiddo. Throw in a heavy snow forecast and what’s left is a grueling day
foreshadowed.
Anyhow, twelve hours and hundreds of gridlocked miles later, I was still
working. By nightfall, a steady snow turned into a blinding blizzard. After I
delivered my last client home, I tried to do the same, but the blizzard had other
ideas. Roads were closed. Visibility, spotty.
Frustrated, I pulled the limousine to the shoulder of the road and parked.
I faced myself in an eerie silence. Ashamed. Disquieted. Hopeless.
My cold
socks, damp from hauling luggage all day, heckled my anguish. The
disheartening truth was clear: Wipe me from the face of the planet and no one
outside family would care. I was a nobody. My two business degrees, a waste. My
impressive college GPA, earned years earlier, didn’t mean jack. My dead-end job
was just a merry-go-round keeping the bills paid until next month.
As I sat there, dazed and deadened by the sullen rhythmic hum of the
windshield wipers, I confessed: My life was a train wreck and I was sick of the
failure in the mirror. I was sick of cursing the alarm clock at 4:00 a.m. I was sick
of chauffeuring drunk bachelors, spoiled prom-brats, and corporate executives. I
was sick of enduring cold winters and humid summers
while watching my life
rot away in traffic. I was sick of being outcasted by my friends as we had nothing
left in common—they talked about their jobs, cars, and two-bedroom
townhouses; I talked about my entrepreneurial dreams. I was sick of my life’s
movie—a movie that no one would want to watch—and despite my preparation,
the
SCRIPT
was still camped in the director’s chair.
And that’s when I considered ending my life. And that’s when everything
changed.
Something
needed to change…and that something was me.
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