What Is The Greatest Thing You Can Do In Life
What likely brought you here is what brings most people to this blog, you googled or searched the topic of this title, in this case: ‘What is the greatest thing you can do in life?’ I’m writing to share my own story and discovery but there is, of course, more than just one greatest thing as the answer is subjective. Just because mine has worked so well for me — and the fact that all of us can actually do it feels incomprehensible powerful to me — doesn’t mean it’s some absolute and universal truth. It’s without a question been a truth that changed my life. Because maybe once or twice we have inflection points to redirect ourselves without the world telling us to do so. Before life altering suffering — “change” almost always requires some pain, but I about submit to you does not require an external locus of suffering or “heart attack” moment to elicit it. You have the power before the suffering has to occur and I’ll get right to it. Here is my submission that you can be whatever you want at any moment you commit to it; and I’ll start my story with two email sent from my brother to me ~ 10 years ago.
———-
From: David Spivey <redacted>
Date: September 7, 2016 at 1:22:20 AM MDT
To: Mike Spivey <redacted>
Subject: Last email
Sadly I think this will be the last email I ever send you - and the last time I talk with you, unless/until you get your shit together and apologize for the harm you have done (to me, mom and dad, and everyone) and continue to willfully do (and we all, other than mom and dad, know full well that your selfishness and actions are willful) — but due to your massive narcissism disorder (NPD) I doubt you’ll ever recognize this - and that’s why I know you are doomed: your REAL problem: you are a narcissistic personality disorder asshole who thinks the world revolves around you. Well, the good news is that the world will definitely be a lot better of a place when you vacate it, which will likely be soon.
Financially - I have revised my Will, and instead of getting (redacted) you will get nothing. I highly doubt you’ll outlive me anyway, but I want you to know the dollar-cost of your lies and the price of what you have done though this is just a tiny fraction of it).
Non-financially, I have known you were full of shit for years, and your lies are just trivially obvious: you aren’t even remotely as clever as you think you are; you are simply the new Carolyn — a transparent, not that bright, manipulative and shameless narcissist. The only thing I don’t really get is do you actually enjoy hurting others (i.e. are you also a masochist, or *just* a fucking lying narcissistic asshole?)
So anyway I don’t ever expect to see you or talk to you again - because I think you are really this narcissistic and won’t actually ever change because your fucking pathetic ego can’t handle admitting your REAL problem - but to satisfy your infinite hypocrisy and fragile little ego I will this time *actually* get the last word in (as you claim I always do, you fucking little hypocrite moron): you are a selfish prick and a selfish narcissistic asshole. Happy now, genius?
ps - your secret (aka lies) are not well kept with me. I have told and will continue to tell everyone who you really are. Deal with it. I have nothing to hide: only you do?…work this out in therapy, you selfish lying narcissistic prick.
---------- Forwarded message ------
From: David Spivey <redacted)>
Date: 22 October 2016 at 11:21
Subject: Fwd: Just an FYI
To: Mike (redacted)
Dear Carolyn
Literally no one other than mom believes you, you lying piece of shit.
Go kill your pathetic self - you are just delaying the inevitable, you selfish prick.
Sent from my iPhone
I’ll revisit these, because it’s never what someone else says or does that actually sits in our mind. Our minds, wonderfully or tragically, are ours alone. The entire point of this writing is that we always have free will. Despite our trauma and life history and genetic makeup at any time we can do whatever it is we want for our betterment, all on our own. And this is the greatest gift of life and what makes us human. Because we can. There is proof all around us — from people who completely 180’d their lives in the right direction and we never hear their story. We are only shared what’s in the news: the tragic twists of the actor who ODs in their hot tub and on and on ad infinitum, but not the silent commitments we make and keep to better our lives. And why does the news share these tragic stories? Because we click on and watch them. There’s a part of us that is thankful for them. Not because of the tragedy or any like of sadness but because it gives us a day pass from facing ourselves. “I feel so sorry for that person and their loved ones I can’t imagine the suffering” we say outloud. Never registering the subconscious next sentence “I’m doing okay I guess, I can’t see myself ever dropping into that much despair.” And so we continue on autpilot often never realizing it took years upon years for these tragedies to unfold. And they truly could have been abrupted from the early starts.
I’m sharing something entirely personal and that could have been tragic in hope it inspires others, even if just a few, to finally take themselves out of autopilot. To visualize themselves in a different place and know with confidence that if out of all people, if someone as incredibly flawed as I am can do it, so too can you.
What I mean to say is this: the singular biggest miracle of life, of being human, is that at any given moment we can choose to be anything we want. We can choose to better ourselves and do so that very day. That very instant. This hasn’t just happened to me but millions upon millions many stories known and celebrated, much more quit victories of someone’s self-belief. Call it a miracle or enlightenment or just doing the right thing. Author and world-record setting athlete David Goggins looking in the mirror and saying “enough is enough, tomorrow I’m going to be a new person” and then going from the lowest of self esteem to transforming himself privately day after day. Private accomplishment day after day after day before people notice, before public victory — it’s always how changing your life plays out.
I can’t speak for Goggins or anyone else though, but people have noticed with me so let speak for myself and offer you my two proofs that are very personal, the second of which I started to share above.
When I was a kid, for a variety of reasons many you’ll be able to extrapolate if you read on, I was tremendously shy and introverted. I had little self-confidence about my ability to interact with other people. I remember acutely thinking I’d never have a date. A had a made up friend named “Jonnie” who I would throw baseballs against the house wall with. Sometimes I’d miss the rebound and the ball would go through my legs but Jonnie never once let it get past him. You don’t have to have a psychology degree to interpret that one. Take a fraction of a second to think on what that actually meant. What did my frightened mind need as a child? Safety. Permanence.
Here’s the thing. I was physically abused as a child and, like many sadly who may be reading this, and at times some pretty terrible things were done to me that I held onto as a secret. Both physically and psychologically. My parents, who understandably worked and couldn’t be there to protect me, could not possibly know it was happening and my mind said “I can’t make it through life like this without a safety net.” For a period of my childhood my safety net simply dwelt in the make believe. In a fake friend who never failed me. In avoiding people. Think about the Matthew Perry reference above and all of the people we know or celebrities whose stories we have heard who lost themselves to escape in self-medication and addiction. Was I doing anything different at 8 years old by escaping in something?
In middle school I was hardly any different. I had ditched an imaginary friend for fantasy books but it was still one great escape act. But something actually did happen. A stranger moved into our town: he was physically bigger than anyone of us but also charismatically just a bigger presence than the rest of us. He hugged people. I could count on one hand the number of people I had hugged. It was two at most, my Mom and Dad. Probably more but I don’t remember it as so. He had more friends in a week than I had in a lifetime and seemed at ease with himself. I wanted that.
So, similar to David Goggins I looked in the mirror as a middle-schooler maybe 12 or 13 years old and said “I’m going to be outgoing!” And the next day I sat at table after table of kids my age. I talked to them and they to me. I changed my life.
I’ve written about this before and I want to be clear while this worked well for me it’s just my story. There’s nothing magical about being extroverted or introverted, just in the desire to go where you want to despite every fiber of your being being afraid to. Did I want to go up to tables of kids I thought would not like me? No of course not, the thought horrified me. But I overrode that fear and did it anyway.
Which brings me to the second life experience. My second proof that as humans our greatest gift is free will to choose our actions. It ties in with what I have already shared — due to my childhood abuse I have an incredibly strong “punch back” mechanism engrained in my subconsciousness. If you are attacked you have to attack back — it’s a survival mechanism and for much of my life I punched back. People who know me now and met me in my adult life don’t believe this (which is the entire point of this post, they don’t believe it because I have consciously chosen to change myself) but I have probably been in over 100 fights as a child and teenager. Likely well over 100. Punch me and there’s no time between stimulus and response other than that survival instinct that says “hit right back or you die.” Which doesn’t just manifest physically, but also psychologically. If I’m wronged I want to immediately fight back and regain power. I was powerless as a child and I finally found a sense of power and agency when I escaped the physical abuse. So I will never enable someone to make someone feel me powerless again.” Or so screams my childhood mind.
But what does that punch back gain me? Almost assuredly nothing but drama. Maybe I solve the problem — but at what price? Fighting it for days, months, years? Just as I saw someone with extroversion and I said “I can do that” I’ve seen people incredibly wronged simply move right on with their lives. In much more severe cases than mine. I’ve written about this in awe about boxer (of all people who should want to punch back) Rubin Carter. That’s power but it’s more. It’s dignity.
I’ll paste the two emails again my brother sent me, read a second time if the above now make helps to understand my belief about all of this. Because that belief allows me to override the fact that I have received more, as well as texts sent to me as recently in the past year. I have emails forwarded to me from my Mom in which he better her and accuses me of the exact thing he is doing. He has blamed my dad. Where would I be if I couldn’t override these?
All of these should make me want to punch back even harder. To help protect people I love. When I got the first email I have posted what did every ounce of my being scream when I got these (and the others)? Punch back! What did I do? I believe I told him in so many words (I have the email I just have the need to bother myself with it) that I loved him and that I always would but that I was blocking him). When I got a serious of texts recently much the same I just told him I was busy helping someone with their college essay and blocked him. It had become so easy.
That was a decision not made over years of fighting him but simply by saying “I’ve seen other people be much better than the version of me that wants to strike back, and I can be better too.” And so I was. Again, reading these and doing nothing should not be possible for me in almost any scenario a previous version of myself existed. So I’ll post again because the greatest part of life is this do nothing other than want to share with others if I can overcome these words from my only brother — his telling me to kill myself — so too can you make any change you want. There’s proof.
From: David Spivey <redacted>
Date: September 7, 2016 at 1:22:20 AM MDT
To: Mike Spivey <redacted>
Subject: Last email
Sadly I think this will be the last email I ever send you - and the last time I talk with you, unless/until you get your shit together and apologize for the harm you have done (to me, mom and dad, and everyone) and continue to willfully do (and we all, other than mom and dad, know full well that your selfishness and actions are willful) — but due to your massive narcissism disorder (NPD) I doubt you’ll ever recognize this - and that’s why I know you are doomed: your REAL problem: you are a narcissistic personality disorder asshole who thinks the world revolves around you. Well, the good news is that the world will definitely be a lot better of a place when you vacate it, which will likely be soon.
Financially - I have revised my Will, and instead of getting (redacted) you will get nothing. I highly doubt you’ll outlive me anyway, but I want you to know the dollar-cost of your lies and the price of what you have done though this is just a tiny fraction of it).
Non-financially, I have known you were full of shit for years, and your lies are just trivially obvious: you aren’t even remotely as clever as you think you are; you are simply the new Carolyn — a transparent, not that bright, manipulative and shameless narcissist. The only thing I don’t really get is do you actually enjoy hurting others (i.e. are you also a masochist, or *just* a fucking lying narcissistic asshole?)
So anyway I don’t ever expect to see you or talk to you again - because I think you are really this narcissistic and won’t actually ever change because your fucking pathetic ego can’t handle admitting your REAL problem - but to satisfy your infinite hypocrisy and fragile little ego I will this time *actually* get the last word in (as you claim I always do, you fucking little hypocrite moron): you are a selfish prick and a selfish narcissistic asshole. Happy now, genius?
ps - your secret (aka lies) are not well kept with me. I have told and will continue to tell everyone who you really are. Deal with it. I have nothing to hide: only you do?…work this out in therapy, you selfish lying narcissistic prick.
---------- Forwarded message ------
From: David Spivey <redacted)>
Date: 22 October 2016 at 11:21
Subject: Fwd: Just an FYI
To: Mike (redacted)
Dear Carolyn
Literally no one other than mom believes you, you lying piece of shit.
Go kill your pathetic self - you are just delaying the inevitable, you selfish prick.
Sent from my iPhone
We are not a mathematical code of our genes and our life experiences where every action we take is that of any other animal on this pale blue dot. We aren’t. We get a say in everything we do. Ironically I was once asked when I was a dean at The University of Colorado if I wanted to debate Sam Harris on the topic of free will. I declined but went to his talk. I couldn’t think of an example to counter his philosophy that we are just an algorithm where are choices have already been made by genetics and aggravated life. I didn’t even realize I had already exercised free will above that nature/nurture gravitational force once, or that I could do it again.
Am I finally being responsive? Yes — nearly 10 years later I’m sharing. Am I responding like I would have my entire life? Not at all. I calmly discussed all of this with a loved one yesterday and we both agreed pointing out abuse and that more importantly, you can rise above it, was a blog long overdue for me.
There’s a poem in the cover of this blog you very well might recognize. At minimum “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
What you may not know is the the author, William Ernest Henley, suffered through terrible health his entire life. The majority of his life was spent in a hospital bed. He had his leg amputated and had to have procedures done weekly due to tuberculosis. I’ve used the word “miracle” in this post — a word I haven’t written ever in my life. But reading his words and knowing his full story. What is a miracle if not choosing to overcome your suffering and genetic mutations that lead to that suffering. Sitting in a hospital bed that’s been close to your only home and thanking whatever gods may be? The greatest gift of life is that. If you can find hope in despair, if you can change yourself by asking for that change and then living it for the rest of our lives, you have been given permission in this life to do anything.
Mike Spivey
We are our own griefs. We are our own happinesses. We are our own remedies.