The movie “Fight Club” is not for everyone but there are a few scenes that are extremely memorable for me. Probably the most memorable and applicable is the scene with Raymond K. Hessel, the unfortunate store clerk who meets Tyler Durden. With a gun to his head, Raymond is forced to give an accurate representation of his life. He lives in a small basement apartment and works a meaningless job after dropping out of Community College. During his time in college, he had mainly studied biology in order to become a veterinarian. In that moment, he is given a gun to the head choice. Tyler Durden tells him that in six weeks he’d better have taken steps toward being a veterinarian or he’ll be dead. Then Raymond is told to run home.
The gun to the head choice is an easy one because there are only two options something or nothing. Although completely fictional, I’m pretty sure that (if real) Raymond would have started on the road to being a veterinarian. People find resources that they never knew they had when put face to face with their mortality. In our daily lives, it is easy to distract ourselves from the fact that we are not moving forward only perpetuating our present level of existence.
So with the gun to your head, what is the thing that you’re not doing that you really need to be? Are you twenty pounds over weight? Are you suffering through a bad relationship because you’re afraid to be alone? Are you stuck in a job that you hate but see no way out? Gun to your head moment, feel the barrel against the back of your head, better or nothing, what is your plan to get there? What you’ll most likely find is that all of the limitations holding you back are created by you. You’ve gotten comfortable with being fat, lazy, angry and tired. Your life doesn’t depend doing it, so it’s easier to stay the same. Don’t kid yourself, you are dying right now. SLOWLY. But when you think hard about the possibilities that you’ve not taken hold of, doesn’t it feel like life is slipping away faster than it would if you were on track?
So who is going to put the gun to your head? No one but you. Your friends, family and coworkers will never pressure you to be much more than you already are. Only you know that thing inside that needs to be drawn out with that gun to head choice. Better or nothing? It’s time to choose! Go be a veterinarian!
When I was a kid, I was very explicit about the fact that I did not like pie. It’s really a shame too because from what I understand, my mother makes great apple and pumpkin pies. Regardless of how much I was missing out, I held firm to my identity as a non-pie eater. Then once at my grandmother’s house, she was getting ready to order a pizza pie and needed to know who wanted some. Despite my mother’s urging that I had eaten it before, I held fast to my pie-free stance. Once the pizzas arrived, my younger self realized the error of his ways. There were exceptions to my pie-free world that I needed to recognize and accept. This was not the absolute commandment that I originally thought that it was.
In 1998, Mark McGwire hit more home-runs than any other player in MLB history. I vividly remember watching the games to see if he would break Hank Aaron’s record and I’m not even a baseball fan. At the time, I remember becoming personally moved by the chase for the home-run record. It changed the way that I thought about several things in my life and it had nothing to do with home-runs but rather strikeouts. McGwire lead the league in home-runs that year but he was also near the top of the leader board for strikeouts. He struck out 2.2 times more than he hit home-runs. In theory, the strikeouts are failure but in reality they are three more pieces of data.
In 2002 my girlfriend (now wife) and I went to a Fleetwood Mac concert. We had a difficult time getting to the concert because she had a broken foot and was using crutches. The general admission parking was at least a half mile walk to the entrance, so I ended up carrying her on my back for much of the distance. As the diligent boyfriend, I wasn’t going to complain. However at the end of the show, she insisted that we try to get a ride back to the car from security. We were told to wait at the security station for the van to come pick us up. Alongside us was an irate woman and her boyfriend, that were also waiting to be picked up. Phrases like, “He can’t go out there!” and “This is ridiculous that we’re being treated this way!” were thrown about several times. It became evident to me that I was sitting next to Billy Corgan. Although the Smashing Pumpkins had broken up, I was still sitting next to a relatively important celebrity of the time. Despite my realization, I kept quiet until after we’d all been picked up by the van and he and his girlfriend had departed. At that point, I spilled the beans to everyone else in the van.
Huryk Unlimited 