Tote Your Wagon Like A Man

Uncle Bubba related this story to me that he accredited to the late boxing promoter Butch Lewis: Every successful man has got rope work to do. Here is the analogy, you have a huge, thick, raw rope over your shoulder, you have on no shirt, you have on some tattered clothes, you have on no shoes. You got dirt on you and you’re sweating. There's burn marks on your shoulders. Connected to that rope is a wagon. That wagon has all your weight on it, all your responsibilities; all the people you’re responsible for, all your children, your wife, your family members, your co-workers, friends. They’re all on that wagon, they’re just sitting there. And what you have to do is pull the wagon up that hill. Now the only thing with it is, can’t nobody help you pull your wagon, you’re the only one on the rope. You pull your wagon alone.

What you can do along the way while you're pulling your wagon is you can find yourself a good wife, a good woman. What that woman does is get down off of the wagon and she fans you while your pulling, she puts water on you while you’re pulling, she puts food in your mouth while you’re pulling, she kicks rocks out of the way while you’re pulling. She is pulling for you. She is equally as important as you are on the pull of the rope.

Now get this here, those people on your wagon that you’re responsible for, you want those people to help you to get your wagon to the top. So you hope that they got their foot hanging over the side and they’re pushing. Or they might be sitting in the back with both legs pushing the wagon; they might be sitting on the wagon but they’re pushing. Their back facing your back but they’re pushing. Maybe some are on the side with one leg over the edge trying to push. You hope that all those people on the wagon that you’re pulling are back there at least trying to help the wagon get to the top of the hill.

Here come’s your problem though, everybody ain’t pushing, everybody ain’t pulling, everybody's not kicking rocks out of the way. Some people are just laying back on the wagon, drinking lemonade, looking at you, talking about how long it’s taking you to get up to the top. Looking at you talking about why this wagon so slow. Then when you start picking up speed they want you to pull harder, you to pull faster, you to pull more. Then they want you to throw what you’ve earned on your way up the hill back on the wagon so that they can have more. But guess what, they ain’t helping you get more. They have a sense of entitlement that says you got more, they should have more. Everyone that come with you cannot go with you. Sometimes you got to kick the people off of the wagon that aren’t pushing and pulling. You say,” I’m sorry man, I thought that I could do this with y’all and I thought you was going with me, but its clear to me that you ain’t nothing but dead weight and it ain’t my responsibility to carry dead weight anymore. I have carried you as long as I have to carry you. You are no longer my responsibility. I’m responsible for my family, my wife and my children; I am not responsible for you. You’ve got to get off of my wagon because I’m the man on the rope. I have the say so.”