The Wisdom of a Billionaire Playboy

Bruce Wayne’s life lesson to Dick Grayson can also help you

Photo by plo olq on Unsplash.

His parents’ accidental deaths turned out to be homicides.

Once he settled into foster care, he spent the rest of his youth trying to impress his single foster dad.

As an adult, he struggled with knowing how he wanted to live. When life hit him hard, he wavered between doing the right thing and withdrawing, burying his head in the sand.

Within five years, he lost two of his closest friends. One died being at the wrong place at the wrong time. The other one died saving a mutual friend. These are just a few things Dick Grayson was experiencing as a young adult on Max’s Titans!

But let’s talk about the real world for a minute. When life happens and your world comes crashing down on you, how do you react? When your loved ones die, or you get let go from your job, or you or a loved one contracts a dreadful disease, what do you do?

If you have no direction in life, hate your job, or deal with some trauma(s) you suffered from as a child, what do you do? Here’s a piece of advice Dick Grayson’s foster dad gives him.

Things inevitably fall apart. The art of life seems to be in how you put them back together. Bruce Wayne (Titans S2/E13 — Nightwing)

When “things” fall apart in your life, how do you put them back together?

The one myth from this quote is that there is a time when one is “together.” Would anyone ever consider themselves all together? We assume the people we sometimes envy have their lives together. Maybe they have the life that we want to live. Keep in mind what we see is our perception of their life.

Let’s consider the time when things are going relatively well for us. Then life throws us a curve, and we experience spiritual, emotional, or physical pain. What do we do then?

In the words of Mark Knopfler —

“Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.”

Our lives can make a 180-degree turn for the worse in a split second.

NOTE: I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist, nor do I play one on television. What follows is some practical advice I have used when my life has changed and I’ve experienced pain. For severe cases, a professional should be consulted as soon as possible.

Start from a picture

If Bruce Wayne suggests putting things back together, he might consider life a puzzle. How do you put together a puzzle? You do it one piece at a time. Most puzzles have a picture on the outside cover of the box. This picture gives you clues as to what colors are in what areas of the puzzle.

In life, what was the “picture” before things fell apart? Do you need to try and recreate that picture, or do you need to develop a completely new concept? Life may never be the same after some tragedies, so you may choose to create an entirely new picture. That decision is up to you.

Place the first piece

Many people start a puzzle by finding and connecting all the outside pieces. Sometimes, two pieces are already together when you first open the box. If you are ever going to finish, you have to begin somewhere. If you are ever going to finish anything, you must take the first step.

Once you have a direction, you take the most obvious or logical next step to begin the re-creation/creation process. What are your options for dealing with the pain of the tragedy? Use whatever means you have to move one step in the direction you think you should.

A few years ago, my mother passed away. I determined my first obvious step was to support my father in whatever he needed. I knew we both needed to create a new picture for ourselves, an image without my mom. We missed her with all our being but determined that she would want us to move on.

He began learning to wash clothes, and my cousin and I helped him with his finances. Other family members pitched in and helped him with other things. As my father became more adjusted to his new life without my mom, I could spend more time processing her death.

Keep connecting the pieces

As mentioned above, you continue to piece together the puzzle until it’s finished. After some tragedies, you may never totally get your life pieced back the way you envision it.

You owe it to yourself to never stop working toward your goal(s). Bruce Wayne would call this “art.” I would call it the growth process. There are many things over which we have no control.

The growth process involves accepting that we have no control over some things, taking responsibility for those things we do have control over, and working toward the lives we want to have.

Life extends far beyond our individual existence

I am not the only one who has had tragedies in their life, nor are you. We are all on this planet together. One of the things my mom told me as a young child,

“No matter what you are going through, there is always someone who has it worse than you.”

While we are trying to piece our lives together, we should try to help those around us do the same. There have been times when I’ve helped someone else when I got a clue about how to make my life better.

Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm… As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands. One for helping yourself, the other for helping others. — Audrey Hepburn

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. — Gandhi

I have also learned that the more time I spend helping others, the less time I spend thinking about myself and my problems.

Whether you believe in an afterlife or not, you only get one chance at this life! Never stop trying to get better at putting the pieces of your life together. Bruce Wayne would encourage us to continue to master this art!