On Living Life

There’s a four part documentary I just finished on Netflix: “Hulk Hogan: Real American.” That’s not a jazzy introduction so I’ll get straight to the point of this blog.

Hulk Hogan the wrestler lived life, once he became famous, in an oddly binary and simple fashion: villain, hero, villain, then hero until he died suddenly of a heart attack at 71. To most of the world who know him he was either villain or hero, not a real person. He would get fawning praise and venomous hate from complete strangers, all because of a narrative they crafted in their heads.

To some extent, though, it dawns on me that’s all of us. We’re all going to have haters who are insecure, have their own issues they would rather not face, and so on. We’ll be looked up to at times by people who we hardly know us.

None of that really matters, though. It’s what can we do for our inner circle, for those we love, before we hit that end date that is only of consequence. Which is just another way of saying tune out the background noise and live for each other — the others that count. That’s living life and while the documentary wasn’t most people’s style I imagine, the allegory I can’t help but share. Because we’ve all lived a part of it. To quote singer Ozzy Osborne, we’ve been the king and we’ve been the clown. But what have we been to those we care about? If you ask yourself that question and the answer is “loving and caring” that’s, to me, living life.