Because no matter how low you go and how lost you feel, there is always tomorrow. And tomorrow just may be the day when you get lifted up and find your way.
There is just one thing that tomorrow demands of you to make this happen: that you never stop believing in your power to create a better day. This way, when your best possible future comes looking for you—almost always at a time and in a place you least expect it—you will be able to recognize its face and respond to its call.
I know this to be true, because although I never saw it coming—even when it came—it’s exactly what happened to me.
Life Lessons
FROM WORK
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People with calluses work hard, but some people with soft hands work even harder because they got themselves to a level where they can take care of their hands.
Overachieving again
23
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THE GREATEST ATTENDER OF ALL TIME
You never know your level of underachieving until you see what overachieving looks like.
When you’re a teenager, the best place to see this is at graduation, when the same name is announced over and over:
And the valedictorian is . . . Doug Wallace. And the most valuable player is . . . Doug Wallace. And the most likely to succeed is . . . Doug Wallace.
Each time, everyone in the audience, especially Mr. and Mrs. Wallace, thinks, Goddamn, that Doug, he’s gonna make something of himself!
This was my experience sitting at our swim team graduation banquet. Though there were other underachievers like myself in school, the kids on swim team were superstars. Some were getting full-ride scholarships and going to places like Spelman College, the University of Maryland, even Harvard; others were planning to train for the Olympics. There were so many overachievers around me, and they were getting up and receiving plaques, trophies, and awards to consistent applause. The hard work I’d seen them put in was paying off.
But every dog has his day, and mine came when I finally got my award that night. It was the honor I deserved: for best attendance. My mom had been so strict that she never let me miss a day of practice.
I think it was called the Participant Award, and it wasn’t even a trophy. It was a certificate. Everyone knew it was the lamest award of the night.
When they called out “Kevin Hart” from the stage, there was a sympathetic smattering of applause. I stepped up to the podium and placed one hand on the microphone. Every other kid who’d spoken had written his speech on a piece of paper or an index card. Now I was on stage—for the first time in my life—with no paper, no index card, no preparation, and no clue what to say.
“Hello—I’m Nancy’s son,” I began, “though a lot of y’all know me as ‘the cheater.’?”
The room burst into laughter. Everyone there knew, and had probably made fun of, that photo on the pool building’s wall of me adjusting my goggles.
“But I would like to say for the record tonight that I never cheated. Otherwise, how would it be possible for me to go to more swim practices than anyone else here, yet not get a single award for my swimming?”
I heard people laughing, clapping their hands, slapping their knees.
“Best Participant? That’s like getting an award for being the team’s Best Kevin. It’s not an accomplishment or a talent; it’s something that my mom decided. She should be up here getting this award. Mom, come on up! I hope this was worth all those whuppings.”
It felt as if something unlocked in me. I’d known that I was the fun guy who helped people lighten up and feel good. But I’d never known it was possible to do the same thing outside of a conversation and light up a whole room.
On some level, my smart-assery on stage was also fueled by my disappointment in myself, and I was trying to make the best out of a bad thing. So I just kept going. I started doing an impression of Coach Ellis, then the other coaches, then the most loved swimmers on the team.
Most of all, I made fun of myself—for being on that team for nearly ten years and getting the most pathetic award of the night, which I said I knew for a fact they gave me out of pity. After all, if they really liked me, they wouldn’t have cropped me out of all the team photos. The best and the brightest had free-ride scholarships to the best universities, I went on, and all I had was a damn Best Participant certificate. “That’s not even gonna get me a job at the Shell station.”
I looked at my mom. She was shaking her head in shame. Yet I kept going—for a full fifteen minutes. I didn’t know I was doing stand-up, but in retrospect, it was my first comedy set. And it killed. Even though I wasn’t the star of the team, I was the star of the banquet.
Afterward, people kept coming up to the table where I was sitting with my mom, saying, “Great speech,” and “Nance, that boy’s funny,” and “You got a real comedian on your hands.”
Only when I look back on this now does it seem significant.
It was the only comedy show of mine that my mother ever attended. “It actually was a good speech,” she admitted when the ceremony ended. But I didn’t feel good. I was walking out of a room full of winners with a goddamn perfect attendance certificate in my hands.
That night felt like a farewell to my childhood. After nearly a decade, it was the end of swim team and the end of most of those friendships. I wouldn’t be going to practice the next day or competing in a swim meet the next weekend. It was over.
I used to resent being forced to spend so much time swimming, but when I was hugging people goodbye that night, I was practically crying. I didn’t understand that what I’d done that night could be a career. I just thought I had made a funny speech that compensated for the fact that, unlike everyone else there, I was going nowhere in life.
24
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ANOTHER DAY IN THE LIFE OF A HERO
Graduating high school was one of the most schizophrenic days of my life.
“I’m fucking free!” I danced through the hallways. “Fuck school. Fuck swimming. Fuck everybody. Mom, kiss my ass, I ain’t doing none of your shit no more!”
But when I left that building for the last time, reality dawned on me again and I thought, Wait a minute. Where do I go? I still don’t have a plan. And the SATs? I should have tried. Hold on a minute, you’re all going away? And you all got a plan? Every single one of you?
I woke up the next day with nothing to do and nowhere to go. All the structure and control that I hated so much was gone. I had total freedom—and it was terrifying. It felt like a giant sinkhole had opened beneath me and I was falling in. Everything had been for free, and I’d taken it all for granted and blown it off.