Editorial: The Straight and Narrow
Written by Chauncey HaworthLike I said, I’ve started to exercise, and I’ve realized the oddest thing. You’d think it would be that I feel a little better, and I do. You might think that it’s knowing I might live a little longer, and it is.
But the thing that is really shocking me about exercise is the same shock I’ve been having my entire life. Every time I succeed at anything, I have the same shock, and it is this:
“You mean, all I had to do was create a checklist, use a proven method and stick to it, and I could’ve had this a long time ago?”
I’m not sure if this is the first time I’ve made the connection. I know that’s how I’ve always found any success, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever realized the larger picture before.
Perhaps it has a way of eluding us once it’s done its job. Maybe it is too heavy a truth for any single person to carry for any specific amount of time. Am I like Naomi Watts’s character in The Ring right now, placing the VHS tape on some random shelf? Am I the character who, having now carried the inspiration for too long, is sharing my secret with someone else only to forget it tomorrow?
God, I hope not.
I hope not because the answer is as simple as this.
Note to self:
“Chauncey, pick anything that you want to do and set aside the smallest amount of time to learn how to do it and to practice doing it. If you do that, you will succeed. Otherwise, you will spend the rest of your life doing what you are doing now, and that is trying to decide what you should be doing.”
Which is ultimately the problem, isn’t it? While writing this, I was reminded of one time that I got super-high while lying on the couch. For those of you who don’t know, super-high is like that one time you got high, only it’s more high.
There I was, lying on the couch, high as all hell, and it came to me. It was like a puzzle piece just fitting into place. I figured out the secret to everything.
The purpose, how things worked, the answer.
I know it sounds like bullshit, but it really happened. It came to me, and I got, like, high within high. My body started to vibrate. At first, it was like shaking, like when you are cold. But then it was eventually vibrating. Vibrating so fast that I started to get warm. Then warmer.
Finally, I was hot. I was lying there; I couldn’t move, my body vibrating so fast that I felt like I was going to burn up. I was scared. I was more than scared. I was fucking terrified!
So terrified that I totally forgot what I was thinking and forgot the answer to everything.
So, you should probably not take my advice as fact. But, I have realized as of late that if you stick to the straight and narrow and follow a checklist, you can really achieve some amazing things.
