A Letter From An Old Lion
The Japanese like to say: “Fall down 7 times, stand up 8.”
Victor Pride likes to say: “If you fail 55 years, try 56 years.”
What you’ll see below is a letter from a man who failed for 55 years and now has extreme regret.
Boo hoo, right? Actually, it’s a great letter and should be read by all. It gives you the most important lesson there ever was…
ENTER THE OLD LION…
“I know all too well what it’s like to be 18 years old and feel like you’ve got the world by the tail, and all of the time it contains. Full of beans and only living for today.
When I hit 21 the party was just getting started. I’d get asked by family members and their friends what I planned to do with my life.
I was only living for the moment and I had no idea … didn’t really care, actually. They would all say, “Don’t worry. You’ve got PLENTY of time!”
That was a LIE. But it was all I needed to satisfy the discontent, anxiousness, and REGRET I’d already started feeling for the time I’d wasted.
Little did I know at the time that I was just getting started. I went for years drinking and partying my life away.
At age 27 I knocked up a girl I’d been screwing around with and was on the verge of dumping. I stuck around for the kid, but his mom and I were nowhere near a match.
I numbed myself to the situation I was in with alcohol, drugs, affairs, pornography, and masturbation. I hated my life, but it was the only one that I knew.
My wife and I had no shared interests and any projects I started in an effort to better myself and my situation got met with hostility by her.
I watched as our children seemed to grow up over night and have children of their own, all the while bouncing from one go-nowhere job to the next trying to make something stick.
I’m now 55 years old. No money in the bank. Go-nowhere inside sales/customer service job. And enduring the mid-life crisis from hell.
Regrets of the life I’ve wasted and the things I’ve done is all that I have. The mere weight of my regrets threaten to crush my very soul.
Right NOW is all that you have! Do NOT let anyone tell you that you “have plenty of time” to figure things out. It is a LIE born in the depths of hell itself.
There is NO TOMORROW. Tomorrow is an illusion. Five minutes from now is a fucking illusion! Hell, your next breath is an illusion!
RIGHT NOW is all that exists, and it requires IMMEDIATE ACTION! Do not end up like me. I’m a fucking loser. I watched my whole life go by waiting on tomorrow and it hasn’t shown up yet.
And you know what, unless I am able to muster the mindset and tenacity at this late stage in my life that it’s going to take, there NEVER WILL be a “tomorrow” for me.
I will die in some clinical environment, REGRETS heaped on top of me, an lucky if I have any family or friends there to bid me farewell.
Seem like a dark picture? It is! Think my life is the exception and not the rule? Perhaps mine is extreme, but the VAST majority of men out there are leading the proverbial lives of quiet desperation.
The VAST majority will die with their regrets haunting them until they draw their final breath. That is a FACT.
Determine RIGHT NOW not to be one of them! Then DO SOMETHING. Get off of you ass and get moving … NOW!
Do not throw your life away in your prime years and blame it on being “young and dumb.” My life is all the proof you need that being young and dumb can much too easily lead to old and stupid.
You do NOT want to end up with the weight of regret that I currently experience. It is a fate I would not wish on my worst enemy.”
THE LETTER FROM AN OLD LION HAS ENDED.
ENTER VICTOR PRIDE…
Maybe I’m the only man ever lived that don’t care about your past, but I don’t.
All I care about is right now and tomorrow. I don’t dwell on someone’s past, I don’t even ask. I don’t care.
Whatever you did back then I don’t give a good goddamn. I only care what you do RIGHT NOW.
Many would boo-hoo, many would pity, many would mock this man, many would use his past as a cautionary tule.
I won’t. I already told you I don’t give a good goddamn about your past. The past? What’s that?
I just checked the clock and it’s RIGHT NOW, so I’d say wake-up unless you’re dead. (And if you are dead, then fuck off and die.)
If you’re alive and you’re 55 and you’re telling the tale then you ain’t dead yet.
If you’re telling the tale, warts and all, then that means you got heart and balls and that’s two out of three, all that’s missing is money.
Take your own damn advice and get started right now. If you got the courage and if you got a pulse then what are you waiting for?
The past is the past, it’s not here anymore. It’s right now, it always has been and it always will be.
I don’t give a good goddamn if you’re an old Lion or a young and hungry Lion, the clock stays put at RIGHT NOW.
And right now you can live a life worthy of a tale or you can live a life worthy of nothing. What’s it gonna be?
THIS OLD LION GOIN’ DOWN TO DIE
ONLY TWO WAYS A LION CAN DIE
LIKE A COWARD OR WITH PRIDE
HOW THIS OLD LION GONNA DIE?
All the old Lions are invited to tell their tale in the comments section, good or bad I don’t care.
As long as you still got heart and balls you can tell the young guns whatever you want to tell them.
Even if you think you don’t have something to say, every old Lion on earth has one thing the young guns don’t have – wisdom gained from experience.
And to the young guns…
When you’re an old Lion, what’s your tale gonna be?
Until next time.
Your man,