Winning - "I am on a drug, it's called Charlie Sheen"...
"...it's not available, cause if you try it once you will die, your head will explode..."
I'm not one to follow celebrity news, in fact I barely even hear about it at all. Well, unless it gets mentioned in the Daily Show, or, even better, gets a Youtube song made about it by the Gregory Brothers, the crew behind Auto Tune The News :) . This was recently the case with Charlie Sheen, they did a parody based on his ABC interview. It was quite funny of course, but I was amazed by the source material - Charlie Sheen's outlandish comments - and that made me curious enough to check out more of the whole interview.
And out-of-the world, erratic, outrageous the whole thing was indeed... but, to my surprise, I did find myself resonating with, even supporting a lot of the things he said! Read on.
"Did you borrow my brain for like 5 seconds and be just like, dude, can't handle it, unplug this bastard!"
Charlie Sheen is not completely out of his mind, he actually has an interesting point masked underneath all the rambling: a message about living life to the max, to do crazy stuff, wild stuff. To going beyond the "drudgery of normal life", and not be bound by the convention and conformism of society. I very much agree with that in essence... life is too short, too precious, to let yourself be ruled by such imposed preconceptions. Though, go against them only if its worthwhile, not just for the sake of it. Otherwise you'll end up just an emo, hipster, or some other sort of eternal non-conformist, and not one step closer to happiness.
"All those words just sound cool together, it comes from my grand-wizard master..."
Of course, a lot of people will look at Charlie Sheen and see a deluded, bipolar individual, veering on and off a path to self destruction. And that may be mostly true, but still I admire what he's trying to do, or at least, that he's trying to do it. Not the ways and the circumstances he is doing it, which seem more likely than not to make things end up bad for him. But if that's what comes in the end, at least he had lots of fun on the way. (Unlike, say, Tom Cruise, which just seems to be going purely batshit crazy). So all in all, even with a downfall, I still wonder if it's not best to try and fail, than to never try at all. "What is best in life?" as a wise man once asked elsewhere...
I mean, how many people let go of their fears, their prejudices, their misconceptions? How many people embrace their dreams, their deep and innermost desires and fantasies, and not just stare them at a distance? And do something outrageous, outstanding? How many even just stop to, at the very least, consider these things?
When I see people that can only do something wild and crazy under the heavy influence of alcohol, I see a repression, a heart closed to the full possibilities of life. Does one really think all that will be that much fun, when all the wild things you do, you can barely remember the next day?
When I see people so excited about their sports team in some match or whatnot, I see an incomprehensible act of wasted effort and energy. When they could be cheering for themselves, being the players, the achievers, the winners. Or even the losers. Since even that, in my opinion, is *much better* than being a spectator, a fan of the benches, a person claiming the victories of others as your own!
Interviewer: "You love to party?"
Sheen: "What's not to love?"
Indeed, a particularly interesting aspect where one can apply this mindset is sexuality and relationships. I'm not going to go into detail on this (as I have on another blog post elsewhere), suffice to say that I think the way one approaches sex says a lot about how intense, wild and free-spirited one is, for lack of better words (forgive my wordsmith-manship failure).
"The run I was on was epic!"
It may be that for Charlie Sheen things end up bad, really bad. And if that happens, it's a shame, and for sure the conformists and traditionalists will be on TV, saying they knew this was coming, that they warned people, etc., etc.. And whilst that may be true, in many of them if you look them into their eyes you will see a glee, an unconscious pleasure and relief that things turned out this way, /their/ way. Because Sheen's lifestyle and comments were a threat, or at least a spit on the face of conventional thinking, and that's something a lot of people don't want to see. Even if they are not fully aware of it, they don't want such extreme lifestyle to be vindicated any more, deep inside they would revel in seeing it crash and burn to the ground as soon as possible, and let only they "normal", conventional mindsets remain.
And for the rest of us, who perhaps think differently, we will be left hoping for another opportunity for more public figures who could pull it off, to live a life to the max, raw and unabashed, without "dying to the max" in the process. To show other people what it can be, that it /can be/. And even better, to hope that in our personal circle, in our own lives we and our friends can be that person: to rock on, to party on, to work hard and play harder. To win. It most cases, in terms of mindset alone, it's really not that hard. Like Sheen said:
"I blinked and I cured my brain. That's how. Everybody has the power."
Wise words from a mad man, so take a moment to consider that. To open your eyes, free your mind... and whenever you have the opportunity, never pass the chance do something *awesome*!
