Wrestling as reality.
Wrestling as reality.
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” ~ William Shakespeare
Frederick Jay “Rick” Rubin is an American record executive and record producer. He is the co-founder of Def Jam Recordings and former co-president of Columbia Records. He has also become a best-selling author with the release of his fabulous book, “The Creative Act: A Way of Being.”
In a recent interview with Krista Tippett, Rick made a somewhat strange case that professional wrestling “is the closest thing to what reality actually is:”
Wrestling is a — it’s an American art form. It’s a unique American art form where like ballet, there’s a physical performance going on and it’s often good versus evil in these stories. And unlike, let’s say, boxing, the two performers in the ring who are opposing each other are working together to put on the best show that they can. No one is trying to hurt anybody else. As a matter of fact, they’re trying to protect each other. That’s their job, is to protect the other person in the ring. So from a non-violent standpoint, I like watching it because it’s like, again, it’s more ballet.
It’s pure theater. All it is is theater. And there’s something interesting because they’re playing themselves, often they’re playing themselves, but they’re a character. And so real life bleeds into the stories. So it’s scripted and someone gets injured. Not because anyone’s trying to injure, but they’re doing acrobatics. So someone’s leg gets broken. And now as a fan, we’re wondering, okay, is their leg broken in real life, or is their leg broken in the story?
Because we never know. Yes, it’s a plot point in the story, but we never know what are plot points and what’s real. Because when real things happen, they work them into the story. They have to because if someone’s going to be out for three months, they got hurt.
So it’s funny because people don’t like wrestling because it’s fake. But that, what I just described, where we’re all ourselves and we’re playing characters in the world and where real life interferes with the characters that we’re playing, and we never really know when we see a story on TV, on the news, let’s say, we never know where’s the performance and where’s the reality? Where’s the crossover?
So I say I love wrestling. One of the reasons is it’s the closest thing to what reality is, is this fake sport. This fake sport is the closest thing to what reality actually is. More so than the news or a documentary or any of the things that we accept as this is what’s really happening.
For the record (ya I know), not only do I agree with Rick, but I wish more people would play their roles consciously, and do so, as Maya Angelou said, “with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
Happy April!
🌱 Random information for the month of April
* Play ball! At just 22 years old, Julio Rodriguez has signed a $400M, 17-year contract to play centerfield for the Seattle Mariners
* The father of capitalism Adam Smith never mentioned “capitalism” once in his writing.
* For the first time in three decades, the French bulldog became the U.S.’s most prevalent purebred dog, ousting Labrador retrievers from the top spot.
* Genetic analysis made from the hair of Ludwig van Beethoven finds evidence of liver disease and hepatitis b that supports contemporary accounts he died of cirrhosis.
* Reconciling previously contradictory results, researchers from Penn and Princeton found a steady association between larger incomes and greater happiness for most people.
* For the first time in history, women are now publishing more books than men.
* KitKat announced that it would launch a brand-new breakfast cereal inspired by the candy bar.
* The USGA and R&A announced plans to roll back the golf ball to reduce hitting distances to a maximum of 320 yards beginning in January 2026.
* The new Golden Pass Express train, which runs from Montreux on Lake Geneva to Interlaken in central Switzerland, has been named “Shania Train.”
* A new study on monkeys using stone tools suggests that the evolution of tool use may have been more spontaneous than intentional.
* The Pantheon is getting an entrance fee. Italy’s most-visited cultural site will now be accessible for a cool €5, unless you’re Roman.
* Only 8% of federal workers in the US are under age 30.
* South Africa is the world’s most internet-addicted country. Most people there are online nearly 10 hours a day, about three hours longer than the global average.
* Emotions such as fear and anxiety can make the heart beat faster. Now a study in mice has found that the reverse is also true — artificially increasing the heart rate can raise anxiety levels.
* Giving babies smooth peanut butter between the age of 4 and 6 months could cause peanut allergies to plummet, scientists say.
* Plants emit ultrasonic sounds when stressed.
* Wilson has created a 3D-printed lattice basketball that does not have to be inflated.
* Bees can teach other bees how to solve puzzles. The passing on of knowledge could be evidence of animal culture.
* The Guinness World Record for the farthest flight by a paper aircraft now belongs to two Boeing engineers.
* A sixth sense could actually be pretty common. All living cells may have the mechanics required to detect magnetic fields.
* A scientist has invented a cure for hiccups.
🎧 Have a listen
I was a recent guest on the CEO Coaching International Podcast, and I went on a bit of a rant. Here’s an excerpt:
If we’re not happy with the story that we’re living, the key is to understand that we’re not living a story. When we wake up every morning, what we are is just pure potential of the universe. Yes, we have knowledge. And we have a history. But that history is not us. That knowledge is not necessarily what the future’s going to look like, it’s just informing decisions that we make. We have our brains wired in such a way that that story becomes like a river that’s flowing through us and it just carries us along such that someday we wake up and we say, ‘What happened? How did I get here? I don’t remember this. I don’t remember living like this. What should I do?’ And that’s what creates a lot of problems for people in midlife and beyond. They maybe change careers or lose a job. And then they have to say, ‘Well, what am I now?’ You weren’t anything before either. You were just doing things. You were in the moment running a company. It doesn’t matter because you can do whatever you want to do anytime you want to do it.
Click here to hear it all.
🤔 Think about this
“The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is in self mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
“Where something becomes extremely difficult and unbearable, there we also stand already quite near its transformation.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke
“A ‘no’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
☝️ And don’t forget
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Until next time, use your imagination.
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