Academy Award Winner, Actor, and Director Bradley Copper talked with Host Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience. Bradley spoke about being an Artist.
Bradley said, “Be willing to completely fail. And the minute you do that. Okay, like all of a sudden, there’s this reservoir of space in your head and soul to actually create even more of an imaginary circumstance. Now, if you haven’t done your work, you’re fucked anyway. But once you’re there. Okay everybody we can just fail. Let’s just fail.”
Bradley punctuated, “Careful is death.”
In the Samurai proverb: Nana korobi ya oki. “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”
When I fall down, when I fail, I get back up. I learn from my failure, from my mistakes. I make the corrections. I put my head down. Put in the work. I work on myself, not on others. I move forward. That’s just life.
Bradley is right. I’m willing to fail, willing to look stupid, be the fool to be great. I’ve probably gotten more from my failures than my wins over a lifetime. Bradley is right too, in that I do the work, put in the work or else it makes no fucking difference at all.
In the First Noble Truth of Buddhism, there will always be suffering in life. The Fourth Noble Truth is the path to end suffering. On that path to end suffering, I will fail, I will lose, and I will win. It’s how I rise up. How I work on myself that finds my path to end suffering over a lifetime. That’s just life. Life is wondrously beautiful in imperfect perfection. That’s the journey.
In Aikido practice, I trained with the bokuto (wooden sword) with 4 attackers with their bokuto. I moved up the center between the two attackers in front. I struck my bokuto across the side from right to left, striking the two attackers in front of me.
Ishibashi Sensei stopped me. I didn’t stand tall and straight when I struck my bokuto. I had my head down, leaning forward. Sensei said, “You can get countered.” I ducked under the two attackers in front of me. I had to stand tall and go straight through them. I had to enter through what I feared. I didn’t. I failed.
Mindfully, I did it again. I stood straight and tall. I waited it out. I entered the attack. I struck my bokuto. I made the two attackers move back with my strike, because they didn’t want to get hit. It felt right. I was right.
Sensei said, “That’s it.”
I got it. Now, I have to practice that 10,000 times. I have to put in the work. Practice makes the unnatural natural. Just train. I work on myself, not on others. It’s not like I have to get somewhere.
I loved someone. Although, I was afraid inside that I was not good enough. I said, “I love you.” No, she didn’t love me. She used me until she could find the man she loved. What we all want in life. My fear was truth. I wasn’t good enough. Now, I knew. That might have been the bravest thing I’ve ever done. Even more than facing four attackers with their bokuto. I failed either way.
I have nothing to do with what goes on inside someone else. I determine what goes on inside me. I love myself for who I am and forgive myself for who I’m not. I know what I have and I know what I don’t have. It’s okay. I’m okay.
I work on myself, not on others. I can always be the better man, the better person. I open up. I keep my heart open on the journey to fall madly and deeply in love with a woman, who could love me back the same. There are always possibilities. Who knows? Lightning could strike. It could.
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Photo by Aleksander Saks on Unsplash
