Who was your hero as a child? There are probably a number of names that immediately come to mind. Maybe you think back to that one poster that hung in your room for years. Isn’t that the pinnacle of personal branding? Being viewed as a hero by millions of people around the world? Let’s look at the example of one of my old heroes, how he achieved that status and what we can learn from it.
I don’t remember my exact age, but I must have been somewhere between 7 and 10 years old when I first saw “Enter The Dragon,” starring Bruce Lee. The film immediately grabbed my attention and it didn’t let me go. It was incredible to watch Bruce work. His fighting style looked a lot more natural than what I had seen in other films until that point. He had precisely the right combination of agility, coordination, and speed. FEven to this day, I haven’t seen any other actor who has manages to grab my attention in exactly the same way Lee did.
For example, there is that one scene where Lee is practicing alone in his room. He extends his leg forward at head height, rotates it half a turn and holds it there for about five seconds before lowering his leg back to the ground. Try it yourself, while keeping your torso straight and making sure you’re not shaking like a straw. It is certainly not impossible with enough practice, but it is a lot more difficult than you might give it credit for.
Not too long afterwards, I went online and looked up everything I could find about Lee. This was the time when websites consisted mainly of text, with an image here and there. Everywhere you saw biographies that told exactly the same story, with Lee who got himself into trouble as a child, being forced to move to America by his parents. On the one hand, there were the various obstacles that he overcame and on the other hand, there was the fact that he apparently had 2500 books in his library. It all made him a very fascinating figure in the eyes of his fans. I wasn’t immune to it myself. In the years that followed, he served as a source of inspiration for my own journey of discovery through the world of sports and fitness, even well into my teenage years.
I remember rereading that abbreviated biography over and over again. As a child, I lacked the necessary knowledge and skills to understand why that one biography interested me so much, but today I recognize in it the same rhythm that fiction writers use in their stories, with obstacles followed by triumphs. Even the entire structure of the biography follows a hero’s journey. So it is no wonder that the piece of text reads like a movie, because it is written like a movie.
Later on, after entering my teenage years, my priorities changed. The whole Bruce Lee thing became something that had once served as fuel for hours of training sessions, but no longer necessary. Every now and then I watched one of his films, but that was it.
A few years ago I came across another, less flattering biography* about Lee. (*In case you want to know, I’m talking about “Unsettled Matters,” although I think there’s a much better biography out there these days, Matthew Polly’s “Bruce Lee: A Life,” which I’ve admittedly yet to read myself.) It showed again the course of his life as I already knew it, but it made some critical comments here and there. Instead of the perfect figure as he was previously portrayed, I now saw him as someone who struggled for a long time to make it as an actor in Hollywood, possibly bragged about himself a little too much… and (unfortunately) gave in to the temptations offered to him as a Hollywood star. No longer the illusion of perfection as before, but all the more human. That was sometimes necessary because his fans had praised him to unattainable heights.
In any case, it should come as no surprise that the pendulum would swing the other way over time. In the film “Birth Of The Dragon” (2016), you get a fictionalized version of Lee, in which he is deliberately portrayed as arrogant and defiant. He almost finds himself in the role of a villain until he has to take on the real bad guys with Wong Jack Man. Although that only happens towards the end of the film. A few years later in 2019, we got “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood,” in which Bruce Lee was once again portrayed as an arrogant villain who picks fights with everyone. Not to mention Lee’s private correspondence, which was leaked about a year ago. In it he made some large orders for English “Coca-Cola,” if you know what I mean. And then I have to put a stop to this. It seems to me that the pendulum has swung a little too far in the other direction and there is a need for some perspective. Boasting about yourself in a playful way here and there does not mean you are arrogant. And perhaps there is more to it, such as someone who has been trying to make it in Hollywood for years and has still not succeeded (until then), with the underlying fear that it may never happen. That’s just a guess, of course, but the story suddenly looks completely different with that underlying context, right? Without the full context, it is very dangerous to make quick judgments. It’s something this Twitter world is all too eager for these days: quick responses and going along with the crowd. And even before Twitter, we as humans already had that tendency, namely: literally throwing stones, without first waiting and thinking about it. There once was someone who said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” Sounds pretty smart. Whoever it is, they should write a book.
Back to Lee. The same lack of context with the “Coca-Cola” orders. Here’s what I think happened: When the money started rolling in, Lee saw the opportunity to finally have fun after years of maintaining a perfect diet and exercise regimen (because no, you can’t just get that six-pack). It’s a bit like anyone who manages to stick to a strict diet for months, followed by the moment when we say goodbye and start eating everything that isn’t nailed down. Not that I condone it, but I understand where it comes from. One extreme causes another extreme.
So is he still my idol, as was the case during my childhood? Do I still continue to train for hours on end in an attempt to achieve the same thing as Bruce Lee? No, not for a long time. But that’s not because of the revelation from a biography, or how he was shown in some movie. No, it’s because I’ve grown and changed along the way. Now I appreciate Lee in a different, more mature way than I used to as a child. Instead of serving as an almost unattainable ideal, I now view him more as an equal, but one for whom I can have a lot of respect. By this I mean: as someone who constantly educated himself by reading very widely, thought critically about generally accepted dogmas, and as someone who pursued his goals with full intensity. These are all values that I also try to achieve.
I recently watched one of his old interviews, in which he talked about honest self-expression… and that he hoped to achieve that with his fighting skills. When I first heard that, I thought it was philosophical nonsense, and I don’t blame you if you still see it that way. At the same time, I notice that this newsletter has grown towards honest self-expression, instead of taking all the correct steps that you are supposed to take… and that, I think, has made it much better. At a certain point I dropped one of those conventions, namely: no more formulaic headlines to (hopefully) get a few more clicks. As a headline I just take a song title of something that I like at that moment… and more or less fits what I’m writing. If my content is good enough, old readers will keep returning and new ones will automatically come. And at the very least, I get a better feeling when I look back at the titles of my old newsletters. That has to count for something.
Kind regards
Vincent J. Dancet