The Guts to Be What You Wanna Be
Drunk. Quiet. Angry.
There’s a lonely man slumped in his in chair in a high-end restaurant filled with so-called “good” rich people. They’re piercing stares of shame, judgment, and disgust do not faze him at the least. They can be heard whispering and chattering about his pathetic state. There’s a few seconds of silence followed by the man demanding the people “what you looking at?”.
Silence.
Then, the man speaks.
“You’re all a buncha fuckin’ assholes. You know why? You don’t have the guts to be what you wanna be!”
He slowly rises from his slumped state and resumes his triad.
“You need people like me! You need people like me, so you can point your fucking fingers, and say ‘that’s the bad guy’!”
He’s stumbling: effects of the alcohol and drugs he consumed earlier kicking it. Despite his impairment, he glares at the rich people, whom are clearly at unease at his actions. He asks everyone if – unlike him – they’re good because he’s bad.
No response.
He answers for them.
“You’re not good. You just know how to hide. How to lie.”
Following that, he declares that he doesn’t have a those problems. He proudly states that despite being a lair, he is always telling the truth. As his bodyguards guides him towards the exit, he asks everyone to say goodnight to the bad guy; as this is the last bad guy of his caliber that they ever will see in their lifetime.
The scene described above is of course the iconic Scarface restaurant monologue. Our lead and titular character, Tony “Scarface” Monata, has infamously built an ill rep for himself throughout the Miami underworld, news media, and public as a multi-millionaire criminal overlord. He is all aware of his sins – and he’s not ashamed of it. He knows who he is. He knows he is a sinner. He knows he’s a bad guy. Rather running away from it, he embraces it.
He has the guts to be what he wants to be.
*****
Tony Monata is a fictional character. His tale is of fiction. However, we cannot deny the fact that what he spoke in that restaurant is reality. It is the truth. When you have guts, you’ll be met with opposition. Either they’ve given up on being who they want to be, or they hide it from the general public; shamming those who’re doing “ill” deeds (while hiding their worse deeds from the world)
They cannot stand the sight of those who are confident with whom they are. They are envious of them: as they’re a reflection of what they can never be in life. The people of Miami hated Scarface. Not because he was a drug dealer, but because of his courageous, outlaw spirit. It is because he brought to light what they do in the dark.
We see this in the real world often. A black man speaks out against the vile actions against his community at the hands of white supremacist. The powers that be silence him for it. They know he’s telling the truth. They know that they are full of shit. History is filled with proof of their inhumane deeds that they deny. They fear that he’ll wake his community up. If they wake up, they will create a resistance group against white supremacy and expose their lies. So, they pull up his criminal record and ill deeds from 20 years ago. If he doesn’t have one, they make one up. They speak of his ill deeds of the past. Anything to discredit and sully his name in order to keep their hands clean. It doesn’t bother him one bit. He has the guts to be true to himself.
It takes guts to stand against an oppression system.
A young actress speaks out against the sexual abuse within the entertainment industry. She has witnessed Hollywood executives and producers coerce teenage girls to perform sexual favors for roles against their will. She makes the world know what is going behind closed doors in Hollywood with the notorious casting couch. Her heart forbids her to allow these foul actions to continue. So, she blows the whistle against it: exposing their deeds to the world. The cowardly predators smear her name. They blacklist her; making sure she never lands a major role in a movie or TV. She cannot get any work. She’s labeled as the bad guy. But she is unfazed by it all. She’s labeled as the bad guy. She knew that saving young girls from this will come with a heavy price. But, she doesn’t care.
It takes guts to defend your gender against an oppression group.
You can not let cowards rule this world.
In the realm of anime, anime is filled with many valiant characters who embrace who they are without fear.
The spirited Gearless Joe of the Spring 2018 hit anime Megalo Box refused to throw match after match, despite the pleads of his chicken-shit trainer and manager, Nanbu. He cares not for the politics of Shirato group’s Megalonia boxing tournament, the tournament’s prize money, the fame that goes with it, and throwing matches for the illegal gambling ring surrounding the tournament. He wants the fight of the lifetime with the champion, Yuri.
Haruhi Suzumiya, titular character of the iconic light novel and anime series The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya embraced this ideology at a young age. She vowed to let the world know that she exist through her life mission of making every day an adventure for herself by discovering interesting and mysterious people and things. Rather than to fade into the background of the world stage, she was driven to become the main actress on it; regardless if she lived in Japan – a nation known for hammering down nails that stick out.
In this world, you cannot be bothered by what others think of you. You’re given a limited amount of time to live your life. If there’s something you want to do, then do it. Yes: People will judge you. Yes: people will shun you. Yes: People will no longer be friends with you or want to be in your circle. They will call you “weird”, “an asshole”, “strange’, whatever words they can think of to make them feel better about their lack of courage and make you feel bad about your everlasting levels of it.
But, you have to embrace that. Having the guts to be who you want to be comes with that. Don’t get me wrong: I am not telling you do anything illegal or immoral. If you are, you deserve to be shun. You deserve to lose your friends. Other than that, embrace who you are. Don’t live in fear over what others think. You don’t have time to do that.
Wasting your time being in fear of what others may think of you is for cowards.
Do not be a coward.
Fakeness fears realness.
Cowards shun the courageous.
Yuki The Snowman 