Transcript

What's Your Story? · Wanzology

What’s Your Story Testing 1, 2, 3, and four. Hi!! Hey, what's going on? It's your boy, Wanz!! Welcome to another episode of WANZOLOGY!! How you doing? You good? Made it to the middle of the week. Some call it hump day, most people call it Wednesday, dun-da-da-dah! I'm doing okay, I hope you are too! I've been pondering, pondering, thinking, wondering, does anyone besides me think it's important to tell their story? If you're listening to this podcast, you've done many, many, many things, yes? You made it this far, you made it through everything that led up to yesterday, and now you're here today and you've done whatever you're doing, right? How come most people don't figure out a way to share their story? To share how they got where they are and what they went through, why they didn't get what they wanted, or why they got exactly what they wanted? More people need to tell their story, you don't have to be famous, you don't have to be, uh, quote unquote somebody to tell your story. Your kids, if you have kids, they might know your story. They might know where you come from because you tell 'em a story about their grandparents and you being raised by them, right? But this is different. To me, this is quite different. Case in point, I don't consider myself to be very, very special in the sense that I know more or can do more or am worth more than anybody else. I see myself as being very, very mediocre, middle of the road. There are a lot of people that are like me. My story starts on a schoolyard in 1967. It's the first thing that I remember. For me, the, I don't know what to call it, the, the thread that goes through everything is music. Ever since I can remember, I've been into music. So I can go through second, third, fourth, fifth grade, seventh, eighth, ninth grade, 10th, 11th, 12th grade, graduation, go to college, spend years in college, get out of college, get a job, work another job, and then get another job, have two kids, and help raise those kids as best that I could in the situation that I was in, and then, because all through that stuff before, there was always, always music in some way, shape or form. Not a secret to anybody. Anybody who knows me at all knows that I'm into music, period. End of story. Fine’. Of course, when an opportunity comes for me to, I don't know, go sing somewhere, of course, I'll take it. I usually do 'cause that's what I like. Now I didn't know it was gonna blow up to be “Thrift Shop”! I didn't know it was gonna be a worldwide sensation! I didn't know it was going to do any more than it sounds great! Of course, the first time I heard it great was a terribly, terribly lacking as a descriptor. Anyway, now you may not have a life-changing event, like getting to go out on tour and living a dream that you've had since you were a kid, but that doesn't mean that your story is any less important. Like me, you probably went to school every day, said the Pledge of Allegiance, played out on the playground. When you got older, you got interested in the opposite sex, and you wrote notes in class. You had to suffer through running the mile in physical education. You couldn't wait to get to high school. You could see the light at the end of that tunnel, and it wasn't a train, and then you got to graduate. What did you do then? Some people worked. Some people went to college, some people went into the service, some people did other things, but everybody took their own path, is my point. Now, why don't you think that path is relevant? Why don't you think that path matters to normal everyday strangers? Maybe you have some things in common with people, but how would you find that out? How would you know unless you shared your story? It seems that people don't share their story until they find or come acrossm stumble upon someone who has a similarity to their story. Like for me, it's college. There are a lot of people who went to college. There are a lot of people who didn't go to college. I'm not saying that's the end all, be all path, that was just the path that I chose because I wanted to be a music teacher. I wanted to be a choir teacher specifically, and I wanted to be that because of the choir teachers that I had in junior high and high school. They inspired me! They gave me accolades and showed me how to improve. They had me interested in how music was made and what did it mean. I remember doing Carina Burana, which is by a composer named Carl Orff, and it was amazing to be singing that with high school kids. It's an Italian for Christ's sake! I don't know very many people who sing Italian in middle school or junior high, but I'll never forget it. I could do that!! Somewhere in your past is something you could do, and I'm not saying that you were the only one who could do it, but there was something that you could do that you liked and because you liked it, it helped shape what you wanted to do when you got older. So what was the process? How did you decide that's what you were gonna do? How did you figure out what path you needed to take in order to reach the goal or the want to achieve said destination? Well, that's a story, right? All I'm saying is that your kids aren't the only people who should hear your story. Everybody has one. Even I, with all the things that happened with “Thrift Shop” and the birth of my sons and dealing with both of their mothers and driving a delivery van and getting into computer software, there are people who would listen to that and go, whoopee, big deal! “Oh! You went and sung for somebody and then…oh yeah, that's great! Not impressed.” Why would they be? They had their own struggles, they had their own path, they had to go through whatever it is they went through to get to wherever they are, you don't think that that would be important to share? Not only with younger people, not only with kids, but with other adults. I have friends who say, you know, “Man, It just seems like you never stop trying! You never give up at anything!”. My dad told me that when I was like almost out of college. No, it was, I was WAY outta college!! I think I was working at my third year of software testing and I'm down at my parents' house helping out in the yard, and every time we'd get done, dad and I would sit out in the garage and we'd chat. One time, he said, “You know what I admire about you?”, it almost locked up my brain!! “Wait, you admire something about me? Because, I mean, I thought I was just like, bad luck, Schlepp Rock!!” I thought I was not a failure, but I know that I was a disappointment. I didn't take over his television shop that he started. I went off to do something on my own. I didn't go into the service like he did, there had to be some disappointment around that. I was the last kid, I was the last hope. But no, I ran away to the middle of the state to go to college in order to be a teacher. So my dad says, “You know what I really admire about you?”, and after the shock wore off, I said, “What's that, Pop?”, he said, “No matter how many times you get knocked down, you always get back up.”, no matter how many times you get knocked down, you always get back up. Unbelievable!! My brain was just like, wait, wait, wait. What? What was that? Oh, it was English! Pinch me, am I dreaming? No. I was stunned, but you know what that did that taught me that someone's always watching. Someone's always paying attention to what you're doing, what you did, where you're gonna go, where you've been. Someone's always paying attention. Some of those people who are paying attention are curious about the circumstances that shaped what choice you were going to make. It's not the big decisions. It's all those little decisions that lead to the big. I learned that in recovery from a guy who had a long, big, long sobriety. It's not the big decisions that we really, really need to be careful of. It's all the little ones that lead up to that big decision, which got me thinking and I, of course, like I do, coined a phrase: “Life is a constant negotiation between the big and the little that makes the big.” Everything that's big is made outta little things, doesn't matter what it is, everything is made from something little. But my point is, all these little things that I went through aren't that different from little things that you went through, and there, of course there are similarities, like, how many kids have you got? I got two sons. What about you? Kids, being a father, being a parent of any human is an experience in and of itself. So there are similarities, there are stories that we could tell about changing diapers and discipline and reading stories and taking kids to the park and kites and fairs and bicycles and video games. I'm not the only one who went through all that stuff. Why wouldn't you tell your story to someone outside of your family? Why wouldn't you show even a complete and total stranger that you earned your place in the human race at this particular time, whatever time that is? No matter what you earned the space you went through, whatever you went through to get to the present. I know it wasn't easy. It's those stories about how ‘not easy’ it could be just to live and to reach the next rung on the ladder or the next level at work, to get that promotion or, raise in pay, there was always something. There was always something, either helping you move forward, holding you back or keeping you stuck in place and you had to get through all of it in order to get to whatever was next, how you did that? Well, that's your story. When you start thinking about something specific. If you went to college, at some point you had to take a test that you had not studied for. Now, some people took a test that they did not study for and failed. Was there ever a time when you took a test you had not studied for and passed? I'm not saying you got an A, but you didn't get a C minus either. How did that happen? What did you do after that? What did it teach you? What's the enduring message from that experience for you? Do you translate that experience to someone else? Like, “Don't put stuff off!!”, “If you know that you're gonna have a test, at some point, you should probably study so that you can get to know material just in case there is a test!!”, that's how that works. Or what about building something or rebuilding something or gardening, farming, it doesn't matter, everybody has a story and none of us really know who needs to hear it! Our kids? That's easy. Most of our kids pay attention and they were there for a lot of the story. Not all of it, but some of it that becomes their story that they tell to their kids. I'll close with this. I think it's fascinating when you look at Native American culture. When you look at primitive jungle culture, when you look at, in this day and age, when you look at a lot of Asian culture, you know who's very important? Old people. Elders. Elders are revered, why? Because they went through stuff. They always shared their stories with younger people, so that younger people had that mental fuel to keep them moving forward. Me, I quote my dad, “Nothing beats a ‘try’, but a fail.”, there was so many years I did not understand what that meant, but he did tell me what he admired about me, “No matter how many times you get knocked down, you always get back up.” Getting up is key, ‘cause if you don't get back up, you don't get another chance, that's the way I figured it. Failure is a learning tool and there are so many places we fail and we don't wanna tell anybody, but that's THE most important lesson, THE most important story we could ever tell. So go forth and tell your story, especially the bad parts. You never know who you're gonna be saving from going through exactly what you went through. You'll never know who you'll inspire to keep going just by hearing how you got through it. We all grow through stuff and we need to share those stories with each other. Thanks for checking me out this week, I really appreciate it. If you think about it, maybe tell somebody about the podcast. Maybe there's a topic that they would be interested in, a perspective that they have not heard, maybe not. I will do my best to be back here next week. This is WANZ signing off and wishing you and yours the best of everything. I'll see you later.