Copyright © 2020 by Matthew McConaughey
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Crown, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Greenlights is a work of nonfiction. Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect privacy.
Photo on this page by Anne Marie Fox.
Photo on this page courtesy of Universal Studios Licensing LLC.
Photo on this page licensed by: Warner Bros. Entertainment. All rights reserved.
All other photos are courtesy of the author.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: McConaughey, Matthew, 1969- author.
Title: Greenlights / Matthew McConaughey.
Description: First edition. | New York: Crown, [2020]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020019330 (print) | LCCN 2020019331 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593139134 (hardcover; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780593139141 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: McConaughey, Matthew, 1969- | McConaughey, Matthew,
1969—Philosophy. | Motion picture actors and actresses—United States—Biography. | Conduct of life.
Classification: LCC PN2287.M54545 A3 2020 (print) | LCC PN2287.M54545 (ebook) | DDC 791.4302/8092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2020019330
LC ebook record available at lccn.loc.gov/2020019331
crownpublishing.com
Book design by Ian Dingman, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Christopher Brand and Michael Morris
Cover photograph: Miller Mobley
rhid_prh_5.6.0_c0_r1
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Introduction
To Life
How Did I Get Here?
What’s a Greenlight?
Part One: Outlaw Logic
Part Two: Find Your Frequency
Part Three: Dirt Roads and Autobahns
Part Four: The Art of Running Downhill
Part Five: Turn the Page
Part Six: The Arrow Doesn't Seek the Target, the Target Draws the Arrow
Part Seven: Be Brave, Take the Hill
Part Eight: Live Your Legacy Now
P.S.
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
This is not a traditional memoir. Yes, I tell stories from the past, but I have no interest in nostalgia, sentimentality, or the retirement most memoirs require. This is not an advice book, either. Although I like preachers, I’m not here to preach and tell you what to do.
This is an approach book. I am here to share stories, insights, and philosophies that can be objectively understood, and if you choose, subjectively adopted, by either changing your reality, or changing how you see it.
This is a playbook, based on adventures in my life. Adventures that have been significant, enlightening, and funny, sometimes because they were meant to be but mostly because they didn’t try to be. I’m an optimist by nature, and humor has been one of my great teachers. It has helped me deal with pain, loss, and lack of trust. I’m not perfect; no, I step in shit all the time and recognize it when I do. I’ve just learned how to scrape it off my boots and carry on.
We all step in shit from time to time. We hit roadblocks, we fuck up, we get fucked, we get sick, we don’t get what we want, we cross thousands of “could have done better”s and “wish that wouldn’t have happened”s in life. Stepping in shit is inevitable, so let’s either see it as good luck, or figure out how to do it less often.
I’ve been in this life for fifty years, trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. Thirty-five years of realizing, remembering, recognizing, gathering, and jotting down what has moved me or turned me on along the way. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to get what I want. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.
I never wrote things down to remember; I always wrote things down so I could forget. The idea of revisiting my life and musings was a daunting one; I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy the company. Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries and have a look at the thirty-five years of writing about who I’ve been over the last fifty. And you know what? I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would. I laughed, I cried, I realized I had remembered more than I expected, and forgot less.
What did I find? I found stories I witnessed and experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, answers to questions I had, reminders of questions I still have, affirmations for certain doubts, beliefs about what matters, theories on relativity, and a whole bunch of bumperstickers.* I found consistent ways that I approached life that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still.
I found a reliable theme.
So, I packed up those journals and took a one-way ticket to solitary confinement in the desert, where I began writing what you hold now: an album, a record, a story of my life so far.
Things I witnessed, dreamed, chased, gave and received.
Truth bombs that interrupted my space and time in ways I could not ignore.
Contracts I have made with myself, many of which I live up to, most of which I still pursue.
These are my sights and seens, felts and figured outs, cools and shamefuls.
Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality.
Initiations, invitations, calibrations, and graduations.
Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets trying to dance between the raindrops.
Rites of passage.
All between or on the other sides of persistence and letting go, on the way to the science of satisfaction in this great experiment called life.
Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.
It’s a love letter.
To life.
* I’ve always loved bumper stickers, so much so that I’ve stuck bumper to sticker and made them one word, bumpersticker. They’re lyrics, one-liners, quick hitters, unobtrusive personal preferences that people publicly express. They’re cheap and they’re fun. They don’t have to be politically correct because, well, they’re just bumperstickers. From the font they’re in, to the color scheme, to the word or words they say, a bumpersticker tells you a lot about the person behind the wheel in front of you. Their political views, if they’ve got a family or not, if they’re free spirits or conformists, funny or serious, what kind of pets they have, what kind of music they like, even what their religious beliefs might be. Over the last fifty years I’ve been collecting my bumperstickers. Some I’ve seen, some I’ve heard, some I stole, some I dreamed, some I said. Some are funny, some are serious, but they all stuck with me…because that’s what bumperstickers do. I’ve included some of my favorites in this book.
I’ve earned a few scars getting through this rodeo of humanity. I’ve been good at it, I’ve been not so good at it, and ultimately, I’ve found some pleasure in all of it, either way. Here are some facts about me to help set the table.
I am the youngest brother of three and the son of parent
s who were twice divorced and thrice married, to each other.
We grew up saying “I love you” to each other. We meant it.
I got whipped until my butt bled for putting on a Cracker Jack tattoo when I was ten.
When I first threatened to run away from home, my parents packed my bags for me.
My dad wasn’t there the day I was born. He called my mom and said, “Only thing I have to say is if it’s a boy, don’t name him ‘Kelly.’”
The only thing I ever knew I wanted to be was a father.
I learned to swim when my mom threw me in the Llano River and I was either going to float off the rocky waterfall thirty yards downstream or make it to the bank. I made it to the bank.
I was always the first one to wear out the knees in my Toughskin jeans.
For two years I led the Under-12 soccer league in red cards, as a goalie.
When I kept whining about my lone pair of tennis shoes being old and out of fashion, my mom told me, “Keep griping and I’ll take you to meet the boy with no feet!!”
I was blackmailed into having sex for the first time when I was fifteen. I was certain I was going to hell for the premarital sex. Today, I am merely certain that I hope that’s not the case.
I was molested by a man when I was eighteen while knocked unconscious in the back of a van.
I’ve done peyote in Real de Catorce, Mexico, in a cage with a mountain lion.
I’ve had seventy-eight stitches sewn into my forehead, by a veterinarian.
I’ve had four concussions from falling out of four trees, three of them on a full moon.
I’ve bongoed naked until the cops arrested me.
I resisted arrest.
I applied to Duke, UT Austin, Southern Methodist, and Grambling for my college education. I got accepted to three out of the four.
I’ve never felt like a victim.
I have a lot of proof that the world is conspiring to make me happy.
I’ve always gotten away with more in life than in my dreams.
I’ve had many people give me poems that I did not know I wrote.
I’ve been naïve, evil, and a cynic. But I am most fearless in my belief of my and mankind’s benevolence and the common denominator of values among us.
I believe the truth is only offensive when we’re lying.
I was raised on existential outlaw logic, a carnation of malaprops, full of fictitious physics, because if it wasn’t true, it ought to be.
* * *
There was nothing fictitious about the love, though. The love was real. Bloody sometimes, but never in question.
I learned early on how to get relative: how to deal.
I learned resilience, consequences, responsibility, and how to work hard. I learned how to love, laugh, forgive, forget, play, and pray. I learned how to hustle, sell, charm, turn a tide, make a downfall my upfall, and spin a yarn. I learned how to navigate highs and lows, hugs and blows, assets and deficits, love songs and epithets. Especially when faced with the inevitable.
This is a story about getting relative with the inevitable.
This is a story about greenlights.
The arrival is inevitable: Death.
A unanimous end, a unified destination.
A noun without regard. Our eulogy. Written.
Lived.
The approach is relative: Life.
A singular procession, our personal journey.
A verb with regard. Our résumé. Write it.
Live it.
This is the first fifty years of my life, of my résumé so far on the way to my eulogy.
Greenlights mean go—advance, carry on, continue. On the road, they are set up to give the flow of traffic the right of way, and when scheduled properly, more vehicles catch more greenlights in succession. They say proceed.
In our lives, they are an affirmation of our way. They’re approvals, support, praise, gifts, gas on our fire, attaboys, and appetites. They’re cash money, birth, springtime, health, success, joy, sustainability, innocence, and fresh starts. We love greenlights. They don’t interfere with our direction. They’re easy. They’re a shoeless summer. They say yes and give us what we want.
Greenlights can also be disguised as yellow and red lights. A caution, a detour, a thoughtful pause, an interruption, a disagreement, indigestion, sickness, and pain. A full stop, a jackknife, an intervention, failure, suffering, a slap in the face, death. We don’t like yellow and red lights. They slow us down or stop our flow. They’re hard. They’re a shoeless winter. They say no, but sometimes give us what we need.
Catching greenlights is about skill: intent, context, consideration, endurance, anticipation, resilience, speed, and discipline. We can catch more greenlights by simply identifying where the red lights are in our life, and then change course to hit fewer of them. We can also earn greenlights, engineer and design for them. We can create more and schedule them in our future—a path of least resistance—through force of will, hard work, and the choices we make. We can be responsible for greenlights.
Catching greenlights is also about timing. The world’s timing, and ours. When we are in the zone, on the frequency, and with the flow. We can catch greenlights by sheer luck, because we are in the right place at the right time. Catching more of them in our future can be about intuition, karma, and fortune. Sometimes catching greenlights is about fate.
Navigating the autobahn of life in the best way possible is about getting relative with the inevitable at the right time. The inevitability of a situation is not relative; when we accept the outcome of a given situation as inevitable, then how we choose to deal with it is relative. We either persist and continue in our present pursuit of a desired result, pivot and take a new tack to get it, or concede altogether and tally one up for fate. We push on, call an audible, or wave the white flag and live to fight another day.
The secret to our satisfaction lies in which one of these we choose to do when.
This is the art of livin.
I believe everything we do in life is part of a plan. Sometimes the plan goes as intended, and sometimes it doesn’t. That’s part of the plan. Realizing this is a greenlight in itself.
The problems we face today eventually turn into blessings in the rearview mirror of life. In time, yesterday’s red light leads us to a greenlight. All destruction eventually leads to construction, all death eventually leads to birth, all pain eventually leads to pleasure. In this life or the next, what goes down will come up.
It’s a matter of how we see the challenge in front of us and how we engage with it. Persist, pivot, or concede. It’s up to us, our choice every time.
This is a book about how to catch more yeses in a world of nos and how to recognize when a no might actually be a yes. This is a book about catching greenlights and realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green.
Greenlights.
By design and on purpose…Good luck.
If all that I would want to do,
would be to sit and talk to you…
would you listen?
—Matthew McConaughey, age twelve
A WEDNESDAY NIGHT, 1974
Dad had just gotten home from work. Greasy blue button-down with “Jim” on the left chest patch already thrown in the washer, he sat at the head of the table in his sleeveless undershirt. He was hungry. My brothers and I had eaten already and Mom pulled his reheated plate from the oven and shoved it in front of him.
“More potatoes, honey,” he said as he dug in.
My dad was a big man. Six foot four, 265 pounds, his “fightin weight,” he’d say, “Any lighter I catch a cold.” At forty-four years old, those 265 pounds were hanging in places that, at this Wednesday evening dinner, my mom didn’t fancy.
“Sure you want more potatoes, FAT MAN?” she barked.
I was crouching behind the couch in
the living room, starting to get nervous.
But Dad, head down, quietly continued to eat.
“Look at ya, that fat belly of yours. Sure, eat up, FAT MAN,” she yapped as she scraped overwhelming amounts of mashed potatoes onto his plate.
That was it. BOOM! Dad flipped the dining table into the ceiling, got up, and began to stalk Mom. “Goddamnit, Katy, I work my ass off all day, I come home, I just want to eat a hot meal in peace.”
It was on. My brothers knew the deal, I knew the deal. Mom knew the deal as she ran to the wall-mounted telephone on the other side of the kitchen to call 911.
“You can’t leave well enough alone, can ya, Katy?” my dad grumbled through gritted teeth, his forefinger raised at her as he closed in across the kitchen floor.
As he closed in, Mom grabbed the handheld end of the phone off the wall mount and raked it across his brow.
Dad’s nose was broken, blood was everywhere.
Mom ran to a cabinet and pulled out a twelve-inch chef’s knife, then squared off at him. “C’mon, FAT MAN! I’ll cut you from your nuts to your gulliver!”
They circled each other in the middle of the kitchen, Mom waving the twelve-inch blade, Dad with his bloody broken nose and snarling incisors. He grabbed a half-full fourteen-ounce bottle of Heinz ketchup off the counter, unscrewed the cap, and brandished it like her blade.
“C’mon, FAT MAN!” Mom dared him again. “I’ll cut you WIIIIDE open!”
Assuming the stance of a mocking matador, Dad began to fling ketchup from the open bottle across Mom’s face and body. “Touché,” he said, as he pranced right to left.
The more he flipped ketchup on her and dodged her slashing chef’s knife, the more frustrated Mom got.
“Touché again!” Dad teased as he splattered a new red stripe across her while eluding another attack.
Around and around they went, until finally, Mom’s frustration turned to fatigue. Now covered in ketchup, she dropped the knife on the floor, stood straight, and began to wipe her tears and catch her breath.
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