Wanzology

Want Great Friends First Be One

 Bob did he, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob, Bob. Hey, hello! Welcome to another Wednesday edition of WANZOLOGY. Yes, sir. I am your host The Wanz, hope you're doing very well today and you're just staying up on top of the wave rather than getting crushed by it. I understand. Life can be very, very challenging which is kind of why I'm doing this podcast because you're not the only one. Challenging is as challenging does, and we all handle it differently, and the whole premise behind this podcast is maybe you gaining a different perspective because of some things that I learned. The more we share with each other, and the more we learn from each other, I think better the chances are that we will actually learn how to get along with each other way, way better, way better.

So yeah, get your copy of #THEBOOKOFWANZ on Amazon.com. Today's chapter is very near and dear to my heart. It goes, IF YOU WANT TO HAVE GREAT FRIENDS, YOU HAVE TO BE A GREAT FRIEND.

Ever feel like you're completely alone, no homies to go to the movies or shopping or share a meal with. Ever spend days just looking out the window, listening to music or cruising social media, hoping to find that one person you can stand to hang out with more than once? Even though I was popular, I didn't ‘feel’ popular. I lived alone, went to shows alone, spent lots of time in my car alone, and slept alone. Though I knew lots of people and I could have called any one of them to go do something, I felt like I had no friends.

Social media has made friendships more difficult. I know thousands of Facebook friends, Twitter, Instagram followers and yet there have been times when I felt like I'm locked in solitary confinement. I did this to myself. I forgot what my mom had told me when I was in college, and uh, wasn't getting mail from anyone like a lot of my other friends were she told me, “If you want to get mail, write someone a letter.” I mean, back in the day before electronic mail, you had to actually put your thoughts on paper, address an envelope, put a stamp on it, and put it in the mailbox for the postman to take. So primal, so analog. These days, emailing, texting, Snapchatting have all made delivery easier. But the concept hasn't changed. It wasn't until I reached out to someone to see how they were or to just make small talk that they and others started to do so in return. When I listened to others going through life, offered suggestions (when asked), supported their triumphs and consoled them in their losses, I found that I was being a good friend and they were good friends to me in return. You may be surprised at how easy it is to reach out to someone and say, “Wusssup?” You may also be surprised how much good it brings that person and you.

When Facebook was like new, um, I had a friend, a Facebook friend, who posted one day that she was going to end it all. She was going to check out. Check out. Because she said that her friends had all kind of abandoned her and she didn't really have anyone. She felt completely and totally alone. And I stopped her as she kept going on about how alone she felt and I said, “You know what? As long as I'm drawing breath, I’ll be there to stand with you. I'll stand in your corner. You have a brilliant idea you wanna execute, let me know. Let's talk about it.” She did not take her own life that day. In fact, she never did take her own life. We, uh, we fell out of touch and last I heard she's living on the East coast and has been married for a long time, has three beautiful kids, two of which have graduated college one is in college and none of that would have happened if she would’ve checked out. And the whole experience caused me it inspired me, it didn't cause me, it inspired me to write a song that's on my first EP called, the EP is called “Wander”, but the name of the song is “I Will”, and it's one of my favorite songs to sing live because I always think of that situation, you know?

Being on the other end of a, of a, of a communication wire and letting someone else know that, no, they're not alone. There are people who actually care for real. They're not just faking it. The bridge of I will is very interesting:

“You can stay in your room just like yesterday
With the same old walls staring back again.
While the life you wish for keeps passing by,
I know it's tough, it’ll make you cry.

The choice is still yours, it'll always be.
You can either stay there, you can leave with me.
One thing's for sure about the great unknown,
You don't have to face your fear alone.”

And the chorus goes like this:

“If you need someone to stand beside you when the world has let you down,
I will, I will.
When you need a direction to follow, someone light the way,
I'll will, I will.”

I’ will, and, uh, it's a promise that I made to myself. Whenever I saw that someone looked as if they were in need of someone to just hang with them, I did it. Because I remember what it was like when I felt like I didn't have anyone. I remember what it was like to watch other people, to watch other people be disenfranchised, excluded, ignored.

I felt so much when I was growing up that I was one of those people. Even though I knew a lot of people and a lot of people knew me, it just didn't occur to me until way later in life, I think I was in my, my late thirties when I finally figured it out, I had been telling myself a lie. For the longest time I had been telling myself, well, I'm just a, “I, I'm just alone.”, “Nobody likes me. They only like me if I'm gonna sing something.” Which I found out, as an adult, from these other kids who were also now adults, that I totally misread all of that. I was totally and completely wrong in my perception of how other people felt about me. It was earth shattering for me, just earth shattering. I swore up and down that those people didn't like me. I was gonna make sure to go to college far and away from Lakewood where I grew up, and I made sure to pick the school that no one else that I knew was going to, because I really had had enough in high school. Between getting picked on in elementary school, getting picked on in junior high school, and then feeling somewhat and completely ignored in high school. Yeah, I'd had enough.

So, I went to a completely unfamiliar place and what's really kind of funny is I invented a persona. The Wanz was just kind of a rumor that hung in the back closet somewhere. Until, you know, my junior year in high school when I, when I found a place that I could go and express myself musically through dance and singing and stuff. It was a disco of all places. But right when it was new, everybody went, right? And so I waited, I went once and saw everybody there and then I waited a couple of months before I went back again. And when I went back again, no one from my school was there, but there were other kids there and they weren't from my school district.

They had no idea what I was like in elementary school, junior high, high school. And that's when I figured out what I really like to put myself across as is happy, go lucky, I want to make you enjoy the life that you're having so that I'm not enjoying it by myself. It's that simple. Developed a sense of humor, developed an ease of just talking to anybody…anybody. By the time I got to college I mean my parents took me over there and there was a nice little barbecue and got me all situated in my dorm room and we're sitting out with all the other parents and their kids. Everybody's looking at each other going, ‘Ooh, weird”. “Huh? Look at that!”, “Look at them.”, “Oh, wow. She's good looking! Yikes! But her father is huge!!” But I couldn't wait for my folks to leave.

And within three hours after them being gone, I had met like eight or 10 people, three of which had killer stereo equipment, one of which had a dynamite record collection, and we set up a dance and told everybody to come. And we did it three nights in that one week. Before all the other underclassmen got there, I think it was like 1,200 students there, you know, and out of 1,200 students, I could pretty much guarantee you that from the Saturday that we went over to the Sunday before the upperclassmen started coming in, I'd say a good 65 to 75 percent of the 1,200 people knew or had heard of me, and that's who I wanted to be.

I wanted to be ‘man about town’, ‘big man on campus’. I wanted to be not a social butterfly, but more like a social Godzilla!! And that's how I've always kind of lived my life since then, since college, it's always about who I'm with are the best people for me to be with. And them being with me is simply the best! Try to have as much fun as possible. Now, decades later, after coming to a few conclusions that used to be completely and utterly wrong, for the most part, I'm still that guy. For the most part, I'm still, ‘I wanna know more about you than I'll tell you about me’. I would just love to hear from you. How are you doing? Do we have situations in common? How did you handle yours? I'll tell you how I handled mine. Maybe we can learn something from each other. And that is what I'm trying to get anyone and everyone who listens to this podcast to understand. We don't live life alone, but our experience, our perspective, the way that we do things and why is different from almost anyone. Even from a 10,000 foot level there are similarities, but from 150, 200, 300 feet, everybody's different. Everybody's different. The challenge is how high can you go before you start seeing the similarities between you and someone you don't really know, hmm?

It's a nice little challenge. It's a nice little challenge. And I'll leave you with this. When I was touring, I found it amazing that there were kids who were afraid of letting other people see who they were just like I had been. And to a certain extent, as an adult, I was the same way. I didn't really want people to know all of me until I knew them first.
I was still learning how to evaluate what made a good person, what qualities that I was looking for. I couldn't, couldn't quite put my finger on it. It was more organic and, uh, and I could feel it, but I couldn't put it into words, I couldn't articulate it, but with practice, oh man, oh man, there are just certain character – ‘istics’ that I looked for.
and I still look for in people, how people behave, how they treat others. Especially those that they don't know is what I watch and learn from how someone behaves when they know they're not being watched or when they think they're not being watched, it can be so different than when they know they're being watched. And I try really hard not to have that delineation.

I try to be the same person to everyone all the time. And you probably tell yourself the same things. You probably think so much of yourself that you couldn't see yourself belittling or ignoring someone but ask yourself this. When's the last time you just looked at a homeless person with their sign or they're disheveled and they may not smell very good, but you looked at them and all you did was kind of grin and say, “Hey, how's it going?” Just to acknowledge that they were present. You ever do that? If you've never done that before, I challenge you to do it. You don't have to do it like 20, 30 times, just a couple, just a couple. Because I tell you right now, I don't know many people who are homeless anymore, I used to know more than a few. But being homeless is one of the most challenging situations ever because you are ignored by most people. People don't mind bearing a grudge, they don't mind people treating them like crap, but every single person I've ever met hates to be ignored. That's the cruelest thing you can do to anyone.

I challenge you to find a stranger and look at them till their gaze meets yours. And just say, “Hi, how you doing?”, “What's up?”, “How you doing? You good?” I like saying you're…” are you good? Are you good?” I might not be able to help him, but you know what? Gotta ask, you gotta ask. As my pops would say, “a closed mouth don't get fed.”

So, if you want to have good friends first, you have to be a good friend, deal? Sounds good. So, you can find “I Will”, the song I was talking about earlier. You can find it on my, on my Wanz page, thewanz.com, and just scroll down you'll, you'll see where the music is and it’s on the EP wander. And I really, really dig that song because it reminds me of how powerful it is for someone else to care about someone else. You never know how big your impact could be until you actually lay it on somebody.

Remember, you’re not the only one going through whatever it is you're going through. Other people have gone through and made it to the other side, other people may be starting what you've already been through, but you're never gonna know or find these people unless you engage with those people.

So, uh, quit being such a scaredy cat. Just say “hi”. “Hi!”

Go out and do something nice for yourself today, okay? Just because I think you're worth it. Screw whatever it is you say. I think you're worth it, and I'll see you when I see you, but I'll talk to you next week.

Peace.