When One Door Opens, Walk Through It
Opportunities and near misses
I’ve had a lot of close calls. Some could have sent me to my demise, while others would have taken me to the stratosphere.
Growing up in a rough part of town, I had a lot of run-ins with violence. I had guns and knives pointed at me as a kid, and I fought a lot. When I was thirteen, I had a pistol put to my head as the thief demanded my jewelry. I refused until he said, “Your ring or your life.” He pulled the orb off my finger and ordered me to run away, kicking me in the butt to get me started.
I did run home, but only to get my big brother. I told him what happened, and he quickly grabbed a machete as I picked up my nunchucks, and we were out the door looking for my assailant.
That’s the way we did things back then. Despite going up to every gang of tough guys he could find and putting the blade to their necks, no one confessed to being the masked robber.
When I think back to that day, I’m amazed at the risk we took. We took a knife (and nunchucks) to a gunfight and were lucky a bullet didn’t confront us.
I grew up hearing the story of how I almost drowned at the beach if it weren’t for my aunt jumping in to save me. As a newborn, I spent a month in the hospital because of a bad skin infection. I had a heart murmur as a kid and saw myself as weak.
It was as if I were on borrowed time. I wanted the most out of life. I wanted to do something special with the gift I was given.
So I always shot for the stars. I wanted to be a pro athlete, then an actor and writer. As a teen, my dream was to win the teenage national bodybuilding championships on the way to turning professional. After winning my division, I was sure my dream was about to come true in the overall decision against the other weight classes. As I was ready to hear my name called, someone else was announced. I was crushed. My dreams were dashed, and being nineteen, I’d never get another shot at the overall title. It was the first time I’d failed to make my dream a reality.
When I was sixteen, I booked a television show on PBS that I would co-host for three and a half years. The job opened doors for me with acting agents in New York. I’d stopped bodybuilding for a year so I could shrink down to a more marketable size for acting. But the iron bug bit me again, and I ballooned up so I could go back to competition. My agents stopped calling. I put an end to my acting career myself.
Straight out of college, I began writing for the biggest fitness magazine in the world, Muscle and Fitness. Life felt easy. I was on TV and in print. But soon, competition came around again, and in my preparation for the Mr. USA, I turned down an assignment from my editor. He never called again. Shot to the foot number two.
When I was done with bodybuilding, I fully committed to acting and writing. I thought the opportunities I had as a kid would still be there, but those ships had sailed. I had to start from scratch.
I got close enough to success to taste it. One gig was to travel around the world and train in martial arts in different countries for a cable show. They faxed me the contract and were about to arrange travel plans for me when I got a call saying they decided to go in another direction. I wish I hadn’t seen the salary before they told me that. I was bummed.
But that was nothing compared to my biggest close call. I auditioned to be on my favorite TV show. It was for the role of a detective, and the audition went so well that the casting director asked me if I was okay moving to LA. I said I was, and when I left the audition, I cried in the middle of Park Avenue because I was sure my life would change forever. Days passed, and I got no call. They’d gone another way. I was heartbroken.
All the disappointment left me disheartened. I was tired of asking for approval at auditions. I was growing weary of the business.
At a meeting with a prominent agent, he asked me why I seemed like I didn’t want to be there. I told him it felt like I was asking for my dad’s love every time I had an audition or meeting, and I was kind of over the dynamic. He said he understood. He didn’t sign me.
When the doors were open for me in acting and writing, I didn’t walk through them. Instead, I chose another path - an illogical one. The fringe world of bodybuilding would pull me away. Or my sense that opportunities would always be there would convince me to let things go. I was spoiled by early success.
The chances we are given don’t stick around forever. Success isn’t guaranteed, so when an opportunity presents itself, when a door is opened, you need to step through it. Don’t think it can’t close on you.
But the opportunities that you think are there for you, but somehow slip away, have to be seen as necessary turning points in your life. I always think about how I wouldn’t have had my daughter if I’d moved to California twenty years ago. I also don’t know that I would have survived success in the entertainment business. I had a problem with party drugs back then, and I might have overdosed in that environment. At worst, the success wouldn’t have brought me happiness because of my underlying mental disorders, and I would have felt more confused than ever.
You can always find a reason why things worked out the way they did. I suppose it’s our way of justifying our decisions and avoiding regret. Looking back at what could have been might bring you down, but whatever you have in your life now is a result of all that came before. If there is something that you love dearly, think about not having it anymore, or never having had it.
Not feeling the love I experience for more daughter would have made life incomplete, no matter what outer success I would have had. Something in me would know that I was missing a big part of what makes life worth living. Sometimes it’s the only part that keeps me going.
If I weren’t bipolar, I wonder if I would have let so many opportunities slip by. Hypomania may have contributed to my optimism when I’d walk away from something. It always seemed things would just work out. I didn’t have to worry.
Of course, as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to understand that we don’t always get second chances. Most people don’t get a first chance. That’s what I didn’t understand as a kid. I bought into my superpowers and thought life would always be as I imagined. The things that fell into my lap made me lucky, not special. I didn’t have the power to summon good fortune on my own. I needed the universe's help to get anywhere. I needed other people to see something in me.
Today, I know that the template we create doesn’t always turn out how we envisioned. If that’s not okay, life becomes much more of a struggle. We long for days gone by so we can try again. But now is the only life we have. The past can’t haunt us if we’re too busy with the present.
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