Velocity first.
In one of my favorite baseball movies, Rick Vaughan is a pitcher who could throw 96mph fastballs (freakishly fast) but couldn’t control it.
It turned out he just had bad eyesight. So he got a set of prescription glasses, and was the best pitcher in the universe for the rest of the movie.
There’s a lesson here: Velocity first.
Know what it’s like to put your whole soul into a thing, your whole vigour, calling on a force beyond. That’s the rare part. That’s the unteachable part.
Then, learn to control it.
Many are the accurate pitchers — few are the 96mph cannon mutants.
Stop and appreciate Tucker Max
Tucker Max is what happens when Alexander meets Diogenes before it’s too late.
He lived such a crazy life that when he wrote it down, the book started an entire genre: debauch-lit.
Real-life tales of insane frat-boyish adventures, whose utter lack of morality is almost completely overshadowed by their enviable wealth of imagination and daring.
The way Tucker conquers the world as a youth (albeit often in harmful ways) is almost proof that sometimes, God really does just want us to live with intensity, and not worry so much about making mistakes. Velocity First. After all, more world-conquering ensued — his books became bestsellers and he became a successful startup founder and investor.
I give up — it is proof.
After about 1,000 pages of best-selling debauchery tales (and a Hollywood movie), he started going to therapy and working on himself at a deep level, and sharing vulnerable stories and advice from his personal growth journey. Now he’s married with 4 (5? 12?) adorable kids, and they all live on a ranch together tending to sheep and having ranch adventures.
Actual sheep!
The debauch prince of Borders has become a portrait of wholesomeness.
But not the milquetoast wholesomeness you see in heartburn medication commercials — a vigorous wholesomeness that brings that unbridled will and daring of his earlier life to these slower, subtler things. I have no evidence for this, I can just tell.
Online, he’s become a leading voice for “Doomer optimism,” helping people prepare for the inevitable cosmic union of shit and fan. I’m inclined to trust his advice, and look forward to a book on parenting. He makes me suspect something long forgotten:
You can’t raise a family if you can’t raise hell.
Editor’s notes:
I’m in love with Velocity First because I’m so bad at it. I’m just starting to explore my own potential in this area, and a lot of my romanticism in this piece is just self-encouragement. Opinions are subject to change, poetic license, etc. Don’t strain your noodle.
Also, I did no research at all on this, wrote it all from in-the-moment inspiration and memory, so if I got things wrong, who cares — velocity first.