The Trouble With Mario

I have a friend named Mario. We’ve maintained a close friendship for more than twenty years even though we don’t live in the same city or see each other often. I met him when he was still in high school—and for as long as I can remember, Mario has struggled with identity issues and self-esteem.

He tried to make his way in the world like everyone else, but kept failing. He’d get a decent job, but could never keep it. He’d make good money for awhile, but then would find some reason to quit. Mario spent most of the last twenty years wandering from job to job and town to town.

And the older he got, the more successful his friends became, which started to be a real source of frustration for him. He watched them buy real-estate and accrue assets while he was still working as a waiter, living in a rented apartment at forty years old.

And yet all of Mario’s friends knew he wasn’t made for the corporate or business world. His perspective on things was always completely “out of the box!” He excelled in any area that involved creativity. What my friend Mario didn’t know is: God designed him to be an artist, a poet, an esthete; one of those people who lives outside the box of conventional society, whose perspective is priceless to all of us trapped inside of it.

But he kept fighting his own nature; trying to make himself conform to be more like “regular” people. Mario spent most of his life struggling with bouts of depression, questions of value and issues of self-worth. He kept trying to integrate himself into “regular” society.

A few months ago I ran into him in Miami. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time so we were catching up on what had transpired in our lives over the last few years. I was telling him about my own success and how well things were going in my life. I told him about my first book, Your Soul’s Assignment.

As I was talking, I could see the look of frustration building in his eyes. He had no career success story of his own to share that he felt would compare to mine. Sensing his irritation, I said to him:
“When are you going to accept yourself for who you are? Stop looking at other people and feeling inadequate because you’re not like them. You’re not like other people. You’re never going to be ‘normal.’ Start defining your value by what you create, by who you are, not by how much stuff you own, or how much money is in your 401k.”

After our conversation, he emailed me and said: “In that one conversation, you cleared up issues I’ve struggled with my whole life!” And all I really did is give him permission to be what God created him to be.

Every artist I’ve ever known has gone through times when they seriously doubted their worth; times when they felt either completely lost or totally inadequate. Every highly creative person I’ve known has struggled and fought to stay afloat emotionally at some point in their lives. And maybe that’s the other side of creativity, like the other side of a coin. Perhaps you can’t have one without the other. Maybe the passion necessary to create and fill your soul with those ecstatic creative moments is the same passion that can bring you down lower than most people ever go.

We want to separate out the good and take only the characteristics that we’re proud of; the ones we want to show everyone—and then leave the rest behind. But life just doesn’t work that way. We can’t divide ourselves up into little parts. We have to accept the whole package.