Bruce Lee: Individual
Directions for an unknown way.
We all want to follow a proven pattern.
A recipe for success. For life. For love. For money. It’s why you’re reading this right now — hoping that some secret of Bruce Lee’s model can be adopted to your own. It’s why I’m writing this series.
Well, it doesn’t work like that. Not exactly at least.
What I’m learning, and hope you will too, is that the “greats” (aka our mammoths) have less what to teach us and more how.
The goal of understanding their pattern of thinking isn’t to adopt it (i.e., Bruce Lee did this so I should do it too). Rather, it’s to see how we might construct our own.
Life’s Burdensome Request
As I combed through the several hundred pages of Bruce’s biography, the next theme bled through every story.
“The individual is more important than the style.”
Bruce Lee was a Kung Fu master. But that reduction removes the complexity that made him so iconic.
He was a Chinese man born in America and raised in Hong Kong. His father was a theatre star who pushed his son into film at a young age. His brother was a champion fencer. The mentor he stumbled upon (after yet another bloodied street fight) happened to be one of the greatest martial artists in history (Ip Man).
His success was a unique amalgamation of his circumstances, preferences, and personality.
When his rebellion reached a breaking point, Bruce’s parents sent him to the furthest place he could legally (and quickly) transition to: America. When the rare opportunities for an Asian actor cropped up in Hollywood, they chose the man who had a slew of childhood acting credits to his name. The speed and flexibility of his fighting style were heavily influenced by his brother: “In his notes, Bruce described Jeet Kune Do as ‘fencing without a sword’.”
A recipe can only be followed if you have the right ingredients. That is why no recipe for success can be handed from one person to another—the ingredients vary too drastically.
“Bruce was a free man, unshackled by any institution…Bruce Lee was something new.”
Your life is asking you to become something new. To lean into your unfair advantages. To take the unblocked roads. To assemble the pieces already in your hands.
And if you’re not sure what those are—that’s the fucking work. You have to become an individual. Most people never do.
But you’re not most people.
This is THE work! Period! Going to spend some time reflecting on this!