TW: mentions of suicide
When you know a lot about someone in your life or someone in the world today, how often do you assume you know how they arrived at where they are now? One of the interesting things about all of us is that we are not just who we are in the present. We all have our stories about what happened to us as we were growing up that allowed us to arrive where we are today.
Here is an example. As you read this, notice what you think the outcome of this person’s life is going to be.
Bill, who is 21 years old, is yelling that he has to get out of the mental hospital to which he has been admitted. He had tried to kill himself on several occasions. He was broke, all of his professional prospects had failed, his girlfriend had left him, and since it was the dead of winter, he slept in an all-night laundromat because it was warm enough to prevent him from freezing. Eventually he realized he could not stay there because it was getting progressively colder, and therefore he was forced to go home to his mother in Hicksville, New York. He hated the idea that she would see him as a failure but he felt he had no other choice. Once there he thought again that he needed to kill himself and looked around the house to find something poisonous to drink. He was afraid that drinking Clorox would be too painful, so he settled on drinking Pledge. It didn’t kill him, however it did make him sick.
This certainly is a sad story and I know when I first heard it, I felt so sad for this young man and was pretty confident he would either eventually succeed in completing suicide or would end up struggling to make enough money to be able to leave his mother’s home and survive in the world.
That isn’t what happened.
I first heard this story on the old radio show by Paul Harvey in one of his segments called “The Rest of the Story.” Over the years he produced hundreds of stories that had surprising endings. (If you Google “Paul Harvey and The Rest of the Story” you will find a listing of the many stories he shared on the air.)
This is actually the story of Billy Joel’s experiences when he was just 21 years old. Amazing, huh? (And I did my own fact checking to ensure that this was a legitimate story and it is. In fact, he shares it in his book Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography.)
What I learned from the experience of first hearing the background without knowing who it was about, is the importance of not jumping to the conclusion that we know someone without knowing the kind of life they had growing up. Everyone has their stories, and when you take the time to invite someone to share theirs, you can discover so many powerful experiences that have led them to where they are today. Sometimes these are stories that involve trauma, struggles, and being cast into unhealthy roles within the family. Sometimes they are stories of loving, kind and caring families where family members provided the kind of nurture that leads to feelings of security later in life.
Each of you reading this has your own story. Many of those early experiences have influenced the you that exists today. Those experiences led to core beliefs about yourself, how much you value who you are, the degree to which you believe in yourself and are able to function without feeling you must be responsible for the successes of the rest of your family, or how much you are free to live in your strengths with the freedom to be yourself.
Billy Joel had to navigate his struggles early in life that also included issues with drugs and alcohol abuse. Not only was he able to overcome these struggles and become highly successful, but he also remembers his past and is very kind to others, as is shown by how he leaves the first several rows at his concerts empty and right before the concert starts, he invites people who are in the nosebleed sections to come down and sit in those seats. Pieces of his life stories are found in many of his songs such as “Piano Man”, “Captain Jack” and “Pressure”.
Obviously not everyone ends up living an extremely successful life living in the spotlight, but we all are more than just who we are today. It can be helpful to go back and explore your life experiences to discover the messages you received and the beliefs they created within you. You can also embrace the hope that if those messages and beliefs were toxic, you can rise above them and find joy, peace, success and love in your life now and for your future life. Please remember: You are worth it!
Invitation for Reflection
- As you read the story about 21-year-old Bill, what were some of your expectations about how he would do in life? What was your reaction to hearing who the story was about?
- What does your response tell you about how we all can jump to conclusions about people’s behaviors? Why can it be valuable to know something about their earlier life?
- How might learning about this impact how you will think about others and how they are behaving now in terms of what might have happened to them growing up?
- Who in your life might benefit from learning this information?
Diane Wagenhals
Director Emeritus, Lakeside Global Institute