The 50th Law - 50 Cent [69]
It is time to reevaluate this preconception and see things from the opposite perspective. Knowledge of human nature and social factors, the kind that is often most valuable to us, depends on knowing people and networks from the inside, on getting a feel for what they are experiencing. This can best be gained by an intense involvement and participation, as opposed to the pseudoscientific pose of the intellectual addicted to studies, citations, and numbers, all designed to back up their preconceptions. This other form of knowledge, from the inside, must be the one that you come to esteem above all others in social matters. It is what will give you power to affect people. To the extent that you feel yourself to be distant and on the outside, you must tell yourself you do not understand what you are studying or trying to reach—you are missing the mark and there is work to be done.
A REALLY INTELLIGENT MAN FEELS WHAT OTHER MEN ONLY KNOW.
—Baron de Montesquieu
CHAPTER 8
Respect the Process—Mastery
THE FOOLS IN LIFE WANT THINGS FAST AND EASY-MONEY, SUCCESS, ATTENTION. BOREDOM IS THEIR GREAT ENEMY AND FEAR. WHATEVER THEY MANAGE TO GET SLIPS THROUGH THEIR HANDS AS FAST AS IT COMES IN. YOU, ON THE OTHER HAND, WANT TO OUTLAST YOUR RIVALS. YOU ARE BUILDING THE FOUNDATION FOR SOMETHING THAT CAN CONTINUE TO EXPAND. TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN, YOU WILL HAVE TO SERVE AN APPRENTICESHIP. YOU MUST LEARN EARLY ON TO ENDURE THE HOURS OF PRACTICE AND DRUDGERY, KNOWING THAT IN THE END ALL OF THAT TIME WILL TRANSLATE INTO A HIGHER PLEASURE—MASTERY OF A CRAFT AND OF YOURSELF. YOUR GOAL IS TO REACH THE ULTIMATE SKILL LEVEL—AN INTUITIVE FEEL FOR WHAT MUST COME NEXT.
Slow Money
MASTER THE INSTRUMENT, MASTER THE MUSIC, THEN FORGET ALL THAT SHIT AND PLAY.
—Charlie Parker
Growing up in Southside Queens, the only people Curtis Jackson could see who had any money and power were the street hustlers. So at the age of eleven and with big dreams for the future, he chose just such a path for himself. Almost immediately, however, he saw that the life of a hustler was not glamorous at all. It consisted mostly of standing on a street corner day after day, selling the same stuff to the same fiends. It meant enduring hours with nothing to do, waiting for customers to come by, often in the bitter cold or the blistering heat. And in those long, tedious hours on the streets, Curtis’s mind naturally would wander; he would find himself wishing for money that would come faster and easier, with more excitement. There were opportunities for this in the hood—they mostly involved crime or some dubious scheme. Sometimes he would feel tempted to try them, but in such moments he would remind himself of the endless stories of the hustlers he had known who had fallen for the illusion of fast, easy money—all suckers who inevitably ended up dead or broke.
There was his friend TC who got tired of hustling and fell in with a crew that would spend the summer robbing convenience stores and occasionally a bank. He made quite a haul of money over those three months and then blew it all over the fall and winter. The following summer he was back at it again. It wasn’t just the money; it was the thrill that came in flirting with so much danger. But that second summer his luck ran out and he was killed in a gunfight with the police.
There was Curtis’s colleague Spite, a few years older, who had managed to save some money from his hustling but had dreams of something much bigger. He convinced himself he could make a fortune fast by buying a piece of a franchise business that was new to the hood but that he felt was certain to be hot. He poured all of his money into the venture, but he was too impatient.