You are what you do, which is why you should always do your best, even when you feel your worst. In fact, when you feel your worst is when it’s most important to fight to be your best.
If you chase a dream and fail, odds are you’ll learn something along the way, or perhaps at least have fun in the attempt. That’s why I say that I don’t regret anything, because everything I’ve done has given me something valuable: experience or a pleasant memory—or if I’m lucky, both. My failures have given me skills and knowledge that helped me later in life when I was doing something else. That’s why I don’t let setbacks get me down: I know that someday the insight I’ve just gained might be just what I need to help me pick myself back up.
Perhaps the most important reason for giving it all is the one that’s the least selfish. Forget about what you gain by giving your best and think about what it means to other people. In a lot of ways, life is like millions of parallel lines of dominoes, and which ones fall depends on one decision at the start of a long chain of events. As much as we need to choose to give our best, what our best might be at any moment depends on a lot of things beyond our control: the resources available to us, the place in which we find ourselves, and whether there are trained people ready to help us. Sometimes, by giving our all we make it possible for someone else to do the same. In other words, we owe it to one another to be our best selves. We need one another.
My mom has always understood this idea. The work she did and the sacrifices she made for me while I was at Walter Reed made it possible for me to give everything I had to my rehab process. I was able to focus all my strength on getting my life back because she always made sure the day-to-day stuff—the paperwork, the cooking, the cleaning, and more paperwork—got done. So when I talk about how I “gave it all” in rehab to put myself back together, it’s vital to remember that the only reason I was able to do it was that my mom was giving her all to make sure that I could. But she didn’t stop there. My mom saw the bigger picture.
When she wasn’t doing stuff to help me, she was finding ways to help other people—other wounded vets and their families. She made friends with all the other soldiers’ mothers at Walter Reed, and then she teamed up with a woman named Maria, the mother of another wounded soldier, to start a program to help the families of new patients at the hospital acclimate to their situations.
When my folks first arrived in Washington, D.C., no one was there to explain things to them. When they first got off the plane, they didn’t know where to go. No one met them at the airport. They had to find their own way to Walter Reed. Then they walked into the hospital, looked around, and my mom and dad asked each other, “Now what?”
That was more hassle and stress than they should have had to put up with at a time like that. My mom understood this. But it’s not this that makes her special. What makes her special is that she did something about it.
She and Maria and some other mothers created a program in which family members who have been at Walter Reed for a while go to the airports or train stations and meet the arriving family members of incoming patients. They escort the new folks to Walter Reed, show them around, explain how things work, and tell them who to talk to in order to get things done. It’s a way for people who have already had time to adjust to make the process easier for families that are just starting such a confusing journey during a traumatic period in their lives.
My mom was an active part of the program while we were at Walter Reed, but now that we’ve left, it continues on its own, with new people arriving, becoming part of it, and then paying it forward to the next wave of families in need. The reason it exists, though, is because my mom rallied a few other people and helped get that ball rolling. She and her friends, despite being in the midst of their own very painful ordeals, gave their best so that others could do the same. Watching my mom in action was one of the greatest things I have ever seen, and it made me want to live my life the same way.
Honestly, I think this is the only way to live. Demand the best from yourself. Give your best in everything you do and to everyone you meet. Create the best work that you can, and try to create situations that help and encourage other people to be and do their best. Imagine for a minute what kind of world this would be if everyone did this even half the time. Picture a life in which everyone you meet pushes themselves and refuses to settle for half-assed crap. Think about how much cleaner our streets would be, how much healthier we’d be, how much better everything would work. That would be a world to be proud of, a life worth working your ass off to preserve. Does this sound crazy? Does it seem impossible?
Well, it isn’t. The only thing keeping us from living in that world is ourselves and the people around us. All it takes to get there is for each of us to start by improving ourselves, becoming our best, and doing what we can to lead others down the same road. It won’t happen overnight, but if we don’t get to work, it will never happen.
So go out and start giving life your all.
6
CHANGE CAN BE GOOD
I once heard that the secret to not dying is to never do anything for the last time. That’s a nice idea, but I think I have a better one: the secret to really living is to always try to be doing something for the first time.
This is how my brother, Bobby, and I approached everything when we were kids. We were athletes, and playing one sport was never enough to keep us interested. As soon as we got good at one, we wanted to learn another. By the time we finished junior high school, we had played baseball, football, and basketball. After we started high school, we set our sights on a new challenge: gymnastics. It looked hard but also fun, and we just knew we had to try it.
It turns out we were naturals—at least, that’s what our coaches told us. Soon we were completely focused on gymnastics, and because we’re twin brothers, we couldn’t help but get really competitive with each other. Even though gymnastics can be a team sport, in a lot of ways it’s really about individual performance, and that’s what Bobby and I focused on. If you had asked him at any point during high school whether he was worried about beating the other schools in competition, he’d have told you, “I don’t care about beating any of them. The only person that I care about beating is my brother.” To be honest, I’d have said the same thing.
When we practiced, if one of us did a cool new move, the other would say, “That’s awesome, bro!” Then we’d think, Now I need to come up with something to one-up him.
Learning gymnastics made for some of the best times my brother and I have ever had together, and we owed it all to the fact that we were willing to try something new just for the sake of the experience. Changing our sport made us better athletes and stronger competitors.
After high school, when an injury put an end to my dream of becoming an Olympic gymnast, Bobby and I both got jobs at American Airlines as members of the ground crew at O’Hare International Airport. Working together was fun at first. Starting a new job is always an interesting time. You’re learning new things and meeting new people. Soon, though, you settle in. Then comes the routine.
That was part of why I joined the Army.
You see, every evening Bobby and I were hanging out with the same friends, in the same pool hall, night in and night out, for about a year and a half. There was never any variety—never a trip to Six Flags, or to a Cubs game, or an afternoon on the beach. Just the same old routine.
One day my brother said, “I need a change. It’s time for me to get out of here.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I put in for a transfer to Texas.”
I didn’t think anything of it at the time. After all, just because he had asked for a transfer didn’t mean he would ever get it. I assumed he was just blowing off steam, and I forgot about it.
Two weeks later, he waved a piece of paper in my face. “Hey, I got that transfer. I’m outta here. Later.” The next thing I knew, Bobby was gone, and I’d been left behind. I had no idea what to do. I knew I wasn’t satisfied
with the life I had, but I felt stuck, so I just kept on doing the same boring shit for another year and a half.
Don’t get me wrong. I liked the work I did at American Airlines. I loved the people I worked with, and I enjoyed hanging out with my friends. None of the individual parts of my life made me unhappy—it was the fact that I couldn’t see anything more to my life beyond my daily grind. Eventually, I reached a point where I knew exactly what my whole month was going to be like because nothing ever changed, and I realized it was never going to change unless I changed it. Like my brother, I needed something different. Life was out there, and I was missing it.
That’s why, in April 2001, my girlfriend, Lisa, and I went down to the military recruiters’ office. We talked to reps from the Marine Corps, the Air Force, the Navy, and the Army. We figured out fairly quickly that the Army would be the best fit for us. Since I don’t want to risk ticking off too many of my fellow veterans, I’ll keep my reasons to myself.
I said to the Army recruiter, “I think I’d like to be a military police officer. I’ve always wanted to know if I could be a cop and see if that’s what I want to do with my life.”
“Your test scores are high enough,” he said. “You could be a police officer if you want. We’ll send you in.” He pulled out a stack of paperwork for me to fill out in triplicate.
Then Lisa asked him the million-dollar question: “Is there any way we can do this together? Go to the same basic training, the same duty stations, and all that?”
The recruiter looked at her and then at me, and he raised one eyebrow suspiciously. “Not really. This is the Army, not the Holiday Inn.”
“Really?” I said. “Are you sure there’s absolutely no way we can do this together?”
“Short of being married, no, there isn’t.”
I don’t know if he heard the gears turning inside my head or smelled the smoke from the thought taking shape inside Lisa’s, but he must have known what we were thinking, because he started shaking his head. “No, no, no. Let’s not do anything drastic, okay?”
We promised him we wouldn’t.
On the drive home, I looked at Lisa. “Hey, wanna get married?”
Lisa said yes, so what happened next wasn’t entirely my fault.
We went to the courthouse. I paid ten dollars for a marriage license, and we got married.
We went back to the recruitment office. Boy, was the Army recruiter thrilled to see us again. He wrote up our orders, which arranged for us to be sent to the same basic-training facility and eventually deployed to the same duty station. We signed up for the “delayed entry” program so that we would have time to settle our civilian affairs, put our stuff into storage, and all that other mundane bullshit, before we had to report for basic training in September.
Most people would have used those five months to prepare themselves mentally, physically, and emotionally for what they were about to do to their lives. Lisa and I didn’t. We spent roughly a month partying like animals, and at the end of it we made a profound discovery: We didn’t want to be married anymore. Lisa suggested we file for divorce, and I agreed.
She filled out the paperwork and paid the fee. It cost nine hundred dollars, which made no sense to me. Why did it cost only ten bucks to get married but nine bills to get divorced? Years later, one of my Army buddies explained it to me: the reason divorce is so expensive is because it’s worth it.
So getting married was a good change that turned bad. Getting divorced seemed like a bad change that turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
When it comes to making changes in your life, things aren’t always what they seem.
I didn’t realize how much of the world I had been missing out on until I got blown up in Iraq. After I was discharged from rehab, I started realizing, Wow—there’s so much out there! Some people might think it’s ironic that now that I was seemingly less mobile I was realizing how big the world is. Actually, I’ve traveled more in the last few years than in my entire life before I was blown-up. These days, I just want to go to new places all the time. If there were any blank spaces left on the map of the world, I’d be on my way there with my camera in my hand.
Now, I’m all about experiencing everything at least once. I’ve done some things people might think are crazy. I’ve had my nipples pierced, I’ve had my eyebrow pierced, I got my tongue pierced, and I have multiple tattoos. I’ll do just about anything that seems like it might be fun, just to do it. I’ll taste a food I’ve never eaten, or jump off a bungee tower. Whatever it is, I’m down with it. I want to do everything at least once, or at least try to do it. I want to experience everything I possibly can in my short-ass life. No matter what it is or how it works out, it means I always have something new to think about, talk about, or look forward to. It’s the best way I know to keep life from getting boring.
This is part of why I don’t like hearing other people sell me short. Not doctors, not friends, no one. Never tell me what I can’t do, because I’ll prove you wrong every time. For instance, I can still climb a tree. And you wouldn’t think I’d be able to learn how to drive a quad all-terrain vehicle with no legs and one hand, but I knew I could do it. Sure, I needed help from my friends at work to modify the quad with special hand controls and hip braces to keep me in the seat, but I always knew it could be done. Anything can be done if you have the will to do it.
I think one of the most important parts of living a full life is to seek out what’s new. Go to new places. Meet new people. Do new things. Eat new foods, consider new ideas, listen to new music, learn a new language—whatever it is that excites you. If it’s new and you think it might be fun, try it. What have you got to lose? Whatever it might cost you in cash or time, it’ll probably be worth it. Money gets spent, stuff can be destroyed, but your memories are yours. An interesting life is something no one can ever take away from you.
Of course, I’m not saying to go totally bat-shit crazy. Don’t do something that causes harm to yourself or others or puts anyone—yourself included—in danger. It should go without saying that anything illegal, immoral, or just stupid and reckless should be off-limits. You have to stay alive to have an interesting life, so use some common sense while pushing your boundaries.
Be smart, but don’t be afraid. I’m just saying you should expose yourself to new things, make your life an adventure. You also have to be willing to put yourself out there in other ways. Take some chances on yourself—trust your instincts. Case in point: I had a great idea for a new kind of wheelchair. I wanted a wheelchair that could dance—a computer program that would move the chair automatically so you could have both hands on your partner instead of having to use a joystick to make the chair move. Maybe it was kind of “out there,” but I was sure I was onto something. When I have an idea like that, I don’t hide it away. Even if it doesn’t work out, so what? If someone doesn’t like it, or they think it’s crazy, we can still have a good laugh about it. But if someone else sees in it what I see in it, then maybe we’ve got something, y’know? So I pitched my wheelchair idea to a friend in the research-and-development division at Quantum Rehab. He thought it sounded like a cool idea, and he asked me to submit it as a formal proposal.
Well, I’d never written a proposal before. I don’t know what one looks like. I wouldn’t even know where to start. But I was determined to do it because it’s something I’d never done before, and I wanted to learn how. So I talked to a couple of people, found out what I had to do, and submitted my idea. And who knows? If it works out, I might help create something totally new, something no one’s ever thought of before. It would be worth getting laughed at for a hundred times, just to have that feeling of success once.
Every time in my life when I felt as if the whole world was crashing down on my shoulders, when I felt like I couldn’t breathe and nothing was ever gonna work out again, when I was in the darkest, shittiest mood you could imagine, somehow things have always turned out for the better. Setbacks and disappointmen
ts suck, but somehow they open my eyes to better ideas, to possibilities I wouldn’t have even considered if everything had gone smoothly.
A lot of us don’t realize that just because something bad happens, it doesn’t mean everything is gonna be bad forever. It could turn out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to your life. For the most part, all the things in life that I thought were horrid, or the worst thing ever, turned out to be the best thing ever. I mean, I’m not gonna say that getting my legs blown off was the best thing that could’ve happened to me, but that experience has given me so many opportunities that I can’t see it as a bad thing. It forced me to grow and see life with new eyes; it created job opportunities I would never have pursued; it made me a public figure and gave me a chance to stand up in front of congressmen and be heard on behalf of other people. I doubt I could have done that if I was just another guy who came home from Iraq without a scratch.
Once you recognize that things that seem terrible might prove to be wonderful, you can live with no limits. You can go where you want to go, fly as high as you want, and do what you want to do—and nothing that anyone else says can ever hold you down again.
Sometimes I hear people say, “I’m thinking about moving to this place or that place, but I don’t want to start all over. I don’t have any friends there. I don’t have enough money.” It’s been my experience that when you get put into a situation where you’re uncomfortable, you don’t know anyone, and you don’t know the details, that’s when you’ll learn a lot about yourself. You’ll meet so many different people and gain tons of new opportunities, most of which you would never have expected. You’ll learn. That experience is great. It’s how you grow.
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