Joe Rogan - There's No One Way to Live Your Life

I don't understand anything when it comes to playing chess out loud. I was friends with this guy that was in prison, and in prison he learned how to play chess with his words, you know, just in his head. And he was at this place that we used to play pool at in White Plains, New York. It's called Executive Billiards, like a classic old school pool hall. I think it's done now. I think they just closed it down or something like that. Maybe they're renovating or something. But this guy was playing with this kid who was like a world champion chess player. And this kid would come by and play pool, this really young kid, like 15, 16 years old. And the two of them were sitting there playing chess with each other, like just saying, you know, knight to queen two or, you know, whatever the fuck it means. And the guy would go, stand there and go, rook to six, blah, blah, blah. And they would go back and forth like this. And I'd be like, I was like, what are you, like, I'm imagining what they're seeing. Like, what are they seeing in their head? Are they seeing like these things move around in three dimensions? Are they looking at it as a grid? How are they keeping track or where their fucking pieces are? It was humbling, very humbling. No, that's just a strategic mind that I do not have. Well, it was interesting to me too, because as a very young man, I think it was like 23 or 24, I got to see how fucking smart this guy was, yet he still wound up in prison. So I was like, okay, like, all right, just because someone's a criminal doesn't mean they're stupid. And just because someone's smart doesn't mean they won't go to jail. Those are two things I saw talking to that guy. And he was in the middle of the game once. And he was gambling with this guy. And this is the guy from prison who was like super smart guy, very sharp guy. And he was talking to the guy who was playing. He said, dude, my wife told me if I don't get home by 10, she wants a divorce. And 10 o'clock rolls around and he yells out, I guess I'm getting a divorce. It was like two hours later, he just racks the balls. He was there till like two o'clock in the morning, but it was hilarious. He just, he said, like, as they started playing, my wife says, if I don't come home by 10. Those are weird times, man. Growing up in like a suburb of Boston, which was like a really nice place, I grew up in this place called Newton, like real quiet, quaint little community. To go from that to like these seedy pool halls of New York was really weird for me. Very, very educational. I got to see all these like street hustlers. I got to hang around with these guys, be friends with a lot of homeless guys. Like I had guys that were like pool players that wound up staying on my couch. They had nowhere to go, you know, a couple of them. And one of them who became my best friend, this guy named Johnny. But it was like, we'd be in all these weird places, gambling. Like these weird, strange places with these guys who were like these semi professional players. Hundreds, thousands of dollars. And there'd be a big crowd of guys all gathered around. It'd be one, two in the morning. And I'd be thinking, these guys, these are older than me men. Like they don't have families. Like what do they do? Like this is a whole separate culture. You know, and you're in the underworld. Oh, it was in a lot of ways, man. A lot of ways. It was very underworld. I was obsessed with it too, man. I just wanted to play pool all the time. I wasn't very good. But the guys that was around were very good. I was around a lot of guys were very, very, very good. And you got to see like the excitement of these. It was like, it wasn't just excitement that everybody was gathered around. And that they were playing this game for a lot of money. It was also the excitement that we were bending the rules. We're all just a bunch of men hanging out at this smoky place at one o'clock in the morning on a Wednesday. And everyone is in it together. We're all just in some way deranged derelicts. You know, some weirdos from society that can figure their way to be able to be at this place at one o'clock in the morning on a Wednesday. Like why the fuck are you here, man? Like don't you have responsibilities? No one there had any responsibilities. Everyone there was some sort of either a professional gambler or they had like some one of the guys was a fireman who they would they would put them on these 24 hour shifts and then they would have a couple days off and just come to pool hall and hang out. Watch guys gamble. So I mean, it's not similar to the stand up. Oh, yeah, man. Land of the Myth fits. Well, that's one of the reasons why I fit in there from stand up, you know, like starting doing stand up from 21 and then being around these pool hall guys when I was like 23 or 24. I was like, oh, you guys are like my fucked up friends and I like it's like too many people out there think that there's like only one way to live your life. Like there's a there's a bunch of ways to live life. There's a lot. Yeah, it's a whole lot of world. And everybody wants you to think that their way of living life is the way you should go about it. It's real tricky because they all want like the sort of confirmation bias. They want they want you to confirm. They want it. Well, it's more like a confirmation desire. They want you to confirm that they're doing the right thing. If you listen to them, then you become happy and you know, they come up to you and they go, hey, man, I'm really really excited that you you told me how to do it this way because now I'm just living my life much better. Thank you very much. People love to hear that like, yeah, I'm right. Then I am living my life the right way. It's not right way.