Risk
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
“Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true but many are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly.”
~Thomas Sowell
If you haven’t seen “Good Will Hunting” recently, it is a lovely story of an untrained math genius who grew up in South Boston and was physically abused by his father. He is working as a janitor at MIT and sees a math problem on a hallway blackboard that has been assigned to a math class as an extra credit assignment expected to take most of the semester to solve and prove. Matt Damon’s character, Will, does it one night when no one is looking.
Each morning, Ben Affleck and two friends pull up in front of Damon’s house to drive him to work. No one knows he is the genius he is. He works construction and works nights at MIT.
When Damon tells his lifelong friend Affleck that he is content doing what he is doing, Affleck gives him a kick in the rear.
“You owe it to me. ‘Cause tomorrow I’m gonna wake up and I’ll be fifty. And I’ll still be doing this sh*t. And that’s all right, that’s fine. I mean, you’re sittin’ on a winning lottery ticket and you’re too much of a p***y to cash it in. And that’s bullsh*t. `Cause I’d do anything to ****in’ have what you got. So would any of these ****in’ guys. It’d be an insult to us if you’re still here in twenty years. Hanging around here is a ****in’ waste of your time.”
“Every day I come by to pick you up. And we go out we have a few drinks and a few laughs, and it’s great. But you know what the best part of my day is? It’s for about ten seconds from when I pull up to the curb to when I get to your door. Because I think maybe I’ll get up there and I’ll knock on the door and you won’t be there. No goodbye, no see you later, no nothin’. Just left.”
I was a Damon. I made the change.
Many of you are Damons, too, going through the motions of your jobs and have something more . . . a gift, a talent, an ability that makes you unique. But, like the Damon character, you are going through a daily grind, feeling trapped.
Will is mandated to a therapist named Sean, played brilliantly by the late Robin Williams who helps him see that his brilliance is alone in the shell of his body and encourages him to chase what is important to him . . . the love of his life.
You may have already met him/her/they. That is great. But you’re living a smaller life than you could, doing what is expected, and, like Damon’s character, it feels hollow.
A lifetime is not a long time. We like to think of ourselves as being immortal but it is a lie that we tell ourselves. How do you want to live between now and its inevitable conclusion?
Like Damon’s character, Will, find someone to help you break through and express your brilliance as only you can.
Be great!
The TikTok account, Dan from HR, is the source of this humorous and accurate short video.
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