I had a good friend once, back when the money flowed like cheap wine, when I had businesses, cars, a house, a wife who was a facade, kids who seemed happy enough, dogs, even chickens. A little oasis, a goddamn picture postcard out in the country. He came to me, this friend, asked me, “How do I do this? How do I start something?” And I looked at him, stone sober, just being honest, which is a rare thing in this world. I said, “The first thing you need to do, young man, is kill your parents.”
Yeah, I know. Sounds horrible. But that’s the first thing. Because if you don’t, they’ll be the anchor, the dead weight dragging you down. They’ll fill your head with their limited wisdom, their small-town fears, their goddamn expectations that only stretch as far as their own miserable lives. If your old man was a cable man from Kentucky, guess what you’ll be if you follow his advice? A cable man from Kentucky. That’s the truth of it. That was my business advice, and I still stand by it, a thousand percent. I’m an old man now, looking back, and I can tell you: the people who didn’t follow that advice? They live next door, or worse, they still live at home. They’re working the same factory, driving the same beat-up truck, married to or divorced from a woman who’s just like his mom. It’s a goddamn loop.
With that in mind, I came up with a similar philosophy for my own spiritual development. There’s a reason I don’t have any friends from my millionaire days. No friends from high school, when I had a mohawk and was swimming in drugs. No friends from my drinking days in Bend, Oregon. I’ve known countless people I genuinely enjoyed being around, but every time I go back to Bend, someone wants me to be the way I used to be. The ghost of the past, always lurking.
And when I meet a beautiful woman, marriage material, and I get close, I find out she wants to “raise me up,” be by my side as I do it all over again, become a millionaire, invent some new widget that leads us to the golden path. Bullshit. Everyone I’ve known from my past, when I meet them again, they all think I’m back to what I was. But I’ve changed. I’ve evolved. Morsels of my soul have shifted. I’m not as materialistic as I used to be. I’m down to almost a backpack. No dog. No real furniture. No real clothes. I’m preparing to leave this country soon, while I can still walk, while my prostate still functions. People my age are real estate agents or event planners, senior positions, pulling in six figures, buying Banana Republic shorts for eighty bucks, dropping names. “Oh, these are Gucci. This is what Dr. So-and-So wears.” That is not me.
I bring this up because I have a spiritual understanding for myself, this evolution. You’re shedding. For me, I’m shedding the titles. I don’t want to be “the dad.” I don’t want to be “the drunken restaurant owner.” I don’t want to be “the bad boy who did this,” or “the party boy who did that.” I’ve evolved. I’m moving on. And that’s why I have this policy:
There’s a specific person. It’s the person who wants to remind you of who you were. The person who wants to remind you of how you used to be, what you used to do, how you used to do it. That “used to” person is dead.
Anyone who wants to resurrect that person cannot be in your life. There is nothing more important than getting those people out of your life. They want to pretend you’re the person you were yesterday. They want to act like you’re the person you were yesterday. But you’re evolving. You’re growing. You’re advancing. You need to be focused on you right now. And anybody that wants to bring you back, anybody who wants to pretend you are the same person they knew one, six, seven years ago… cut them loose. Let them drown in their own nostalgia. Your dark hour is for you alone.
How many times, I mean, how many goddamn times can we talk about catching that winning touchdown in high school? Or that threesome you paid for in the Philippines when you were twenty and still wet behind the ears in the Navy? It’s nice, sure, to see family, to watch the kids swirl around the ghosts of yesterday, but what I’m talking about is being consumed. Drowning in your past. You gotta let it go. Let them go.
They say the farther you’re leaning back into the past, the closer you are to death. And it’s true. But if you plan, if you live, if you share the future, you’ve got something to fight for. Forward thinking. Don’t let the past hold you back. In most cases, it’s not about if the plane can fly—hell, that’s what it was designed for. It’s about the weight it’s carrying, the baggage that keeps most planes from soaring, from being who they really are.
So, that’s it. The closure. The final thought. You live, you bleed, you make your mistakes, and if you’re lucky, you learn a thing or two. The past is a dead weight, a phantom limb that aches when the weather changes. You can carry it, let it define you, let it drag you back into the mud. Or you can cut it off. Leave it for the scavengers. The only real freedom is in the shedding, in the letting go of who you were supposed to be, of who they think you are. Because the only person who matters is the one you’re becoming. And that’s a journey you make alone, with nothing but the dust of yesterday in your wake.
