There is a great quote from Winston Churchill: “If you’re going through hell, keep going."217
Q: Do you think overcoming challenges is something innate in your personality?
I was driven as a kid, very willful. One story I remember: At age six, I was grounded for some reason. I don’t remember why, but I felt it was unjust. I really wanted to go to my cousin’s birthday party.218 I escaped from my nanny and walked across the city.
I was just learning to read, so I could barely read the road signs. This was foolish, and something terrible could have happened. But I was so determined I walked clear across the capital city of South Africa at six years old.219
It was ten or twelve miles, much farther than I realized, and it took me about four hours. As my mom was leaving the party with my brother and sister, she saw me walking down the road and freaked out. So I climbed a tree and refused to come down until she promised not to punish me.220
I seem to have a high, innate drive, and that’s been true even since I was a little kid.
When I was five or six, I thought I was insane. It became clear other people’s minds weren’t exploding with ideas all the time. I felt strange. It’s hard to turn it off. It might sound great when it is on. But what if it doesn’t turn off? It’s like a never-ending explosion.221
I was the youngest kid in my grade, so I was quite small. I was kind of a smart aleck, too. It was a recipe for disaster. I’d get called every name in the book and beaten up. Being small and having violent bullies is a bad situation.222
There was a level of violence in my childhood that wouldn’t be tolerated in any American school. It was like Lord of the Flies. There were a couple of gangs that were pretty evil, and I was one of their chosen victims. Partly because I stuck up for another kid they were relentless on, that made me a target.223
The place where I grew up in South Africa was very violent. Fighting was normal, it was part of the culture.224 It’ll certainly toughen you up; that’s for sure. I was in a lot of fights I didn’t want to be in. I got beaten up really badly in a few of them. I was in real hardcore street fights, from about six to sixteen.225
I was almost beaten to death—within an inch of my life at one point.226
I got to a reasonably good size around fifteen, and around sixteen they stopped trying to beat me up, because it didn’t work out so well for them anymore.227
People say they’re worried about the damage of words. People worried about words have never been punched in the face. Once you’ve been punched in the face, real hard, right on the nose—you’ll take any words over that.228
Adversity shaped me. My pain threshold became very high.229