What would Keith Richards do_ - Jessica Pallington West [15]
WHAT WOULD KEITH DO?
Okay: First off, put the basic kernel of the Commandments to work:
Accept it.
Things aren’t always fair … but you can make them more fair than they know.
Let’s look at this problem at the office in further close-up.
Work, like Mick, is a necessary evil. We’ve heard that there are people out there who love their jobs, but who these people are is one of the great mysteries in life, like the workings on an open G chord. Work can provide an inordinately high supply of stress. One of its biggest headaches: Other People. Co-workers.
In learning to live life like Keith Richards, the best way to deal with a difficult or distracting co-worker is to view him or her as the Mick. Once defined as that necessary “other half”—the one, according to the principles of Keith, that exists in order for us to exist, and whose reality must be tolerated—this person suddenly doesn’t seem quite as daunting anymore. With attitude and vision adjusted, we can manage the problem more easily.
Within this specific work scenario, comparison can be found in the horror Keith felt in being passed over for a knighthood when it went to Mick instead. It’s bad enough that one should be overlooked, but being overlooked for your evil twin is all the more painful.
So what would Keith do? What did Keith do? First: Talk to as many people as you can. Speak specifically to those who will be able to transmit the most bad words regarding your adversary to the largest number of listeners. Let it out. Let it bleed. You’re pissed. Say it. Eventually all the negative attention will focus onto the unworthy one, and this focus will bring up another question to those watching from the sidelines. Specifically: Was he worthy? Why him? And why did he even take the job? After all the complaining he did about the company, shouldn’t he have passed it up? And now what? Will he mess up?
By inspiring so much negative focus on the unworthy one who took your knighthood—I mean chair—away, eventually you will cause him to trip, and you’ll be there to take over. If nothing else, it will stir up and inspire much sympathy for you—and that’s even better. Like time, sympathy is something that can be bent.
Moral indignation can be a good thing—as long as you get cast as the particular moral indignation’s hero. Everyone loves to sign up for that fan club. So keep talking. There’s no greater satisfaction than the one felt in getting royalty dethroned.
V. CHANGE, LOSS, AND WHEN YOU’RE TOLD TO GO
Fired. Broken up with. Divorced from. Evicted. Kicked out. No longer welcome.
They are all basically the same thing, just in different guises. When it comes, it’s like having your left lung ripped out. You’re pissed. It’s painful. It disorients you. What do you do?
WHAT WOULD KEITH DO?
First, realize that you’re not so special. You’re more a part of the norm now that you’ve been banished. To give it a Keith term, it’s exile. Maybe it’s a heavy term, but it feels heavy when it happens, so you’d might as well pump it up with an equally heavy name.
In Keith’s life, there’s a significant chapter on exile. It even went on to become the name of the band’s (maybe) best album. Keith went through a long period of exile in the 1970s. But, like a drug habit, he kicked it. And if Keith can do it, you can do it—you can take a disturbing condition and turn it around into something that sparkles.
Keith and exile started up their love-hate affair in 1969. He’d been flying high for years, in more ways then one. Suddenly, the rug was pulled out from under him. Not just one rug. A whole warehouse full of rugs. Realities were shifting. Fame became an affliction rather than a charm.
He was being cheated by the band’s manager. There was the death of Brian Jones. There was the free concert at Altamont, which, instead of being the mini–United Nations model of harmonious living that Jagger had preached it would be, gave rock ’n’ roll its very own