A Message for the Young and Hungry Castaways

To get to heaven sometimes you gotta spend some time in hell.

Hardship is what builds you and hardship is what breaks you, if you let it. 

Broken down or built up, the choice is yours.

You can build yourself from the ground up or you can be pounded down into the ground. 

Either is fine with me. Like the girls in Thailand say — up to you.

A Message for the Young and Hungry Castaways

This is both a video and a text piece.

The complete text is below the video, read it if you like — though the video is more powerful.

To absorb the message fully, I’d suggest watching the video at night when you’re alone.

Again, friend, up to you…

Did you ever see that movie Cast Away, starring Tom Hanks?

Tom Hanks plays a normal man who’s in a plane crash and he’s the only survivor of his plane crash.

He drifted onto an island, and he stayed on that island for four years. And after 4 years he decided to make a move and leave the island.

And he made it. He found his way back to civilization. And that’s that. He was back.

But … he was still an outsider there. He was still alone, with all those people, because he’d been gone for 4 years.

So who’s gonna wait for you for 4 years? Nobody. So he was left with himself, like he was on the island.

The movie ends with Tom Hanks sitting in a car at an intersection. And he looks this way and he looks this way and he looks in front of him, and that’s that.

He has the option to go wherever he wants to go. He did his time, his 4 years. Now he’s free to do whatever he wants.

I spent five years in the jungle, in Asia.

Five years ago, I gave up everything that I had. I sold it, I gave it away or I put it in the dumpster.

I sold my car, got rid of all my furniture, gave my dogs away, and I went to my own island, where I lived for five years.

But for me, on my island, I was building something: I was building my future.

And I spent five years doing it and there were people around me but I didn’t see them, I didn’t hear them. They weren’t really there. It was just me doing my thing.

People would try to talk to me but I would be deaf to them. If you walked in front of me, I was blind to you.

You couldn’t treat me like a person that was there because I wasn’t there. I might’ve been there physically, but I wasn’t there with you, mentally.

I couldn’t have a conversation with you. You wouldn’t get a response from me.

We wouldn’t converse. I was busy. I was on my own island, building what I have now.

And now I’m back. I’m back at my intersection. I can go that way. I can go that way. I can go that way.

Because I did my time, you see, I did my 5 years. I put in that time to be able to do what I want now.

It was a long term thing, it didn’t happen overnight, it took 5 years. But now I’m here at that intersection.

And just like Tom Hanks in Cast Away, there’s nobody here for me. There’s no friends, there’s no family, there’s no nothing.

It’s me like it always was. Like it always will be. Because that’s truly what we have, if we want to do something extraordinary.

If we want to do something extraordinary; it’s just us, it’s just people like us.

There are no groups of people who do extraordinary things. It’s single people.

It’s people that give up everything else in pursuit of their goal.

Now Tom Hanks didn’t pursue his goal. Everything was just taken from him.

I willingly gave up all in exchange to gain all. And it worked out for me.

But was it worth it? Giving up everything to gain everything?

Yeah, it was worth it.

Who else could be young, free and rich all at the same time?

Many people are rich but they’re not young. Many people are free but they’re not rich. Many people are free and rich but they are not young.

So was it worth it? Yeah, it was worth it. I’d do it all again in a heartbeat.

I give all to get all, all the time. All day every day.

All I have to give is all and then I’ll get all in return. That’s a fair trade for me.

Some people think they can go to that intersection without putting in the time first, but you can’t do that.

You don’t have freedom of choice until you’ve earned it, until you’ve put in that time.

The time is required for you to be free. You cannot be at the intersection if you didn’t do that time. It is not the same.

That is only going to make sense to people who can hear it. Most of you will be deaf to it and that’s fine.

Some of you will hear it.

And those are the people that need to hear it.

——

Until next time.

Your man,