TASK #13: I GOT YOUR BACK
“To find yourself, think for yourself…” Socrates
The other night I watched “Wind River”. Have you seen it? It’s good. It stars the chick from Godzilla, the not-Jason Bourne, and the American Indian actor who always plays an American Indian. In this movie he plays a cop–on an Indian Reservation. The Wind River reservation. The Godzilla chick plays and FBI agent who for some crazy reason is sent from Tampa or somewhere warm to the coldest place in American in the middle of a blizzard to find out who killed a teen age girl that not-Jason Bourne found frozen to death in the tundra.
This isn’t the land of back-up, Jane. This is a land of you’re on your own.
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I won’t tell you any more other than: it has some “holy shit” violence that erupts when you least expect it, and I like that, so I give it a thumbs-up.
Why I’m writing about it is because of an exchange between the cop and the Fed as they look to go into a ram-shackled crack house to find someone that they want to talk to. Here’s how it went:
Fed chick: Shouldn’t we wait for back-up?
Cop: This isn’t the land of back-up, Jane. This is a land of you’re on your own.
That stuck with me, because all of us–not just Indian cops and FBI chicks–are more or less on our own. Once we step out the door for work, we are on our own; on the road we are on our own; at work we are on our own; when we go out at night we are on our own.
Write down all the decisions that you had to make ON YOUR OWN over the past couple of weeks. The list will surprise you.
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Now, I’m not saying that we don’t have people who have our back–or at least say that they have our back–like my wife. She supports me–so did my mom and dad when they were around; I figure that I can trust my kids to come through if I really need them; and I have one or two friends that I can lean on…but none of the people that I just mentioned are always around–they’re just not. My wife can’t be there to rub my back and encourage me when I’m getting chewed out at work; my friends can’t step in when my car breaks down on the highway–I mean I could call them and grab a ride after the fact, but my point is: your wife, your kids, your friends, your parents aren’t grafted to your side and they can not be there at critical moments–you have to handle shit yourself.
And that’s not a bad thing. You have to be self reliant. You have to be strong. You have to look at situations with a critical eye, evaluate them, and make decisions.
TASK
Who do you rely on? Write down the names. Then write down all the decisions that you had to make ON YOUR OWN over the past couple of weeks. The list will surprise you.
Photo by Adrian Clark