Henry Rollins - Young Person
Young person, you'll find in your life that sometimes your great ambitions will be momentarily stymied, thwarted, marginalized, by those who were perhaps luckier, come from money, where more doors opened, where college was a given, it was not a student loan, it was something that dad paid for. To where an ease and confidence in life was almost a birthright, where for you it was a very hard climb and you will encounter people who never have to pay in full. They get to wreck the room and never have to clean it. They can get all the way through high school and never understand where a dollar comes from because they just get it given to them.
Okay that happens all the time. Just because you come from nothing you must not let that be something that holds you back. It is easy to loose your moral compass, your decency, your sense of civility, and your sense of community. Very easy. People are getting a little desperate. They might not show their best elements to you. You must never lower yourself to being a person you don't like. There is no better time than now to have a moral and civic backbone. To have a moral and civic true north. This is a tremendous opportunity for you, a young person to be heroic. To be morally upstanding, to be helpful, almost boy-scout like, presidential, to be altruistic. Weakness is what brings ignorance, cheapness, racism, homophobia, desperation, cruelty, brutality, all these things that will keep a society chained to the ground. One foot nailed to the floor.
It's by being strong in the face of all of that, not lowering yourself to it. You must really go for your own and realize how short life is. You got what you got so you got to make the most of it. You really can't spend a whole lot of time worrying about his, you really have to go for your own. If you have an idea of what you want to do in your future, you must go for it with almost monastic obsession, be it music, the ballet, or just a basic degree. You have to go at it single-mindedly and let nothing get in your way. And that's why your young, that's why you can survive on no sleep, Top Ramen noodles, and dental floss and still look good. And take advantage of that great energy you have and can take an all-nighter.
All the people you admire from Muhammad Ali to any politician they work and work and work. Some of the greatest thinkers, artists, architects, politicians and other movers, shakers, and creaters, all over the world have come from very meager beginnings. If these people can do it, why not you? You got to keep picking yourself up and reaching for it. And that's the long and short of it.
