Humble Poet - Things No One Else Can Teach Us

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by

HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2019

First published in the United States by HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers , 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007.

Copyright © Humble the Poet 2019

Humble the Poet asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008359652

Ebook Edition © 2019 ISBN: 9780008359669

Version: 2019-09-12

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

FORTUNATELY/UNFORTUNATELY, NOTHING LASTS FOREVER

Open

1. Everything Is Temporary, so Appreciate Those You Have While You Have Them

2. Patience Is Making Time Your BFF

3. You Are Going to Die, and Remembering That Can Be a Good Thing

4. Don’t Cry Because It’s Over, Smile Because It Happened

Close

KNOWING YOURSELF MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE

Open

5. We Can Survive a Lot

6. Service to Others Is Also a Great Service to Ourselves ( Sewa )

7. When We Know Our Why, Our How Gets Easier

8. We Gotta Pay Tuition for Life Lessons

Close

DON’T FOCUS ON THE POT OF GOLD, ENJOY THE RAINBOW

Open

9. Focus on the Fun, and Everything Else Will Fall into Place (and If It Doesn’t, at Least You’re Having Fun)

10. The Pot of Gold Rarely Makes the Journey Worth It

11. Give Yourself Permission to Dance on Different Rainbows

12. We All Have Different Rainbows

13. Often, There Is No End to the Rainbow

Close

ZOOM OUT

Open

14. Try to Relate to the Bad Guys in Your Story

15. Chapters End, but Our Story as a Whole Keeps Evolving

16. Judge Less, Understand More

17. You Aren’t That Special, Embrace It

18. We Don’t Own a Crystal Ball, so Stop Assuming the Future

19. Are You Being Pushed by Fear, or Pulled by Love?

Close

ZOOM IN

Open

20. Life Isn’t Black and White, There’s Plenty of Gray in Between

21. Don’t Be So Hyperbolic (That’s a Big Word for Dramatic)

22. Detach Your Self-Worth from Your Choices

Close

LIMIT YOUR SELF-PITY

Open

23. Caution: Social Media Is a Playground for Self-Pity

24. Self-Pity Is Easy and Convenient like Fast Food (and Just as Unhealthy)

25. We Don’t Scream “Why Me?!” During the Good Times, so Don’t Scream It During the Bad

26. Turn Rejection into Invitation

27. Self-Pity Feeds Our Insecurities (and That Leaves Us Bitter and Angry)

28. Getting Offended Is a Form of Self-Pity

Close

THERE’S NO WIN OR LOSE, THERE’S ONLY WIN OR LEARN

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29. Stop Calling Them Failures, Start Calling Them Teachers

30. Not Everyone We Lose Is a Loss

31. We Can Lose More Trying to Win

32. Freedom Is Having Nothing to Lose

33. There Are No Time Machines, so Fix It Next Time

Close

Outro

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

Also by Humble the Poet

About the Publisher

In 1998 Snoop Dogg released his third album, Da Game Is to Be Sold, Not to Be Told , and I remember seeing the ridiculously blinged-out album cover and thinking to myself, “What does that mean? Why can’t you just tell me Da Game ? Why do I have to buy it?”

I’ve always loved hip hop, and as a youngster, I soaked in as much of it as I could, reading the lyrics and jumping on internet forums to share my thoughts and immerse myself in those of other aficionados. Those early years made me realize how amazing writers and hip hop artists were. I knew then if I wanted to explore my talents as a writer, it needed to be through rap.

So I spent the first years of adulthood writing my own hip hop songs, giving myself the name Poet to make me sound smarter, classier, and more acceptable. As the journey of sharing my work with the world began, my written words began to connect much more than any song I recorded. That’s when I began to flirt with the idea of becoming a writer, well, a REAL writer.

I dreamed of the day I’d become a full-fledged real writer. You know, the type of writer who was published with a major publisher. The type of writer who spent most of his time traveling the world, having promiscuous sex, finding inspiration in cloud formations, and somehow interpreting all those experiences into words [1]that would be celebrated beyond my life.

How romantic it would be to live the life of a real writer. Early morning writing sessions with a typewriter by a lake and perfectly developed ideas floating from my head onto the page. I would see a leaf fall from a tree and convert that moment into an epic chapter about change, expectations, and the circle of life.

I told myself that if I ever got the opportunity to become a real writer, I would take the money the publishers gave me and find a quiet apartment in a quiet city in a quiet corner of the planet and write my epic first, and last, novel. Then I’d go into hiding like J. D. Salinger, live off the royalties, and once in a while reply to letters from high school students who were forced to study my book for their English independent study projects.

Instead, when I signed my contract with HarperCollins, I wrote the bulk of this book on my mother’s dining table at home in Toronto. I walked around the same neighborhood I grew up in, taking familiar routes where the nostalgia fades and gentrification continues to thrive. I politely avoided my wonderful editors’ recommendations to write an outline [2]and spent an entire summer free writing. I then spent the rest of the fall and winter rewriting from scratch, after failing to find a thread that joined all my summer jumbles together. [3]

Being a full-time creative came with other unglamorous challenges. Poor posture and neglecting to do the most basic stretches flared up a preexisting lower back injury, so sitting for more than an hour, whether at my dining room table, in a movie theater, or on a private jet, resulted in pain for the rest of the day. Irony never loses its sense of humor. Sitting down to write became more taxing on my body than my previous life as an elementary school teacher, when I stood all day in front of a class.

I experienced profound creative moments during the writing process late at night, only to forget them in the morning. I began to keep a notebook to flesh out ideas when they struck, but I couldn’t understand my own chicken scratch when it was time to revisit.

Yeah, the glorious life of “real writer” continues to elude me, or maybe I just overly romanticized it in my head. When those romantic ideas didn’t match the life I had in front of me, I began feeling disappointed, betrayed, and generally crappy. In order to feel better, I had to let go of the expectations I had and open myself up to finding, discovering, and creating beauty in the circumstances in front of me and not the fantasies between my ears. And that’s what this book is about.