Curtis Hibbler AKA: The Most Interesting Man in the World
Have you ever had a parent tell you something when you were young…
and you believed it for so long…
that when you finally discovered the truth, you thought—
“Wait a minute… Daddy told me wrong!”
Well…
my daddy told me wrong.
At least…
that’s what I thought.
Let me take you back.
I was a young boy, and I remember seeing some people smoking marijuana.
They were sitting around, smoking, laughing, talking…
and my daddy saw what was going on.
He looked at us and said:
“I better not catch you all out there smoking that shit.”
Now, when my daddy said something like that…
you didn’t ask questions.
You didn’t say, “Well, Dad, could you please explain the scientific reasoning behind that position?”
No.
You just said…
“Yes, sir.”
Because Daddy’s voice had a way of making you understand the consequences…
without him ever actually telling you what the consequences were.
So I stayed away from marijuana.
For years.
I didn’t smoke it in high school.
I didn’t smoke it in my twenties.
I didn’t smoke it in my thirties.
And there was another reason I stayed away.
My job.
I had jobs where random drug tests were possible.
And I wasn’t about to lose my paycheck because I decided to experiment with something Daddy had already warned me about.
So I went through life believing one thing:
Weed was something I didn’t do.
Period.
Then…
I turned 50.
And apparently, turning 50 gave me a whole new level of courage.
Or stupidity.
I’m still trying to figure out which one.
I was on a timeshare balcony one day…
and sitting there in an ashtray was a joint.
Now, I wasn’t looking for a joint.
I wasn’t planning on smoking a joint.
But there it was.
And I looked at it.
And after fifty years of hearing my daddy’s voice in my head, I thought…
“Well… I’m 50 now.”
So…
I smoked it.
And you know what happened?
Nothing.
I didn’t lose my mind.
I didn’t start seeing purple elephants.
I didn’t suddenly forget my name.
What did happen was I looked at the television…
and I could clearly read the TV guide!
I’m dyslexic, and it takes more time for me to read words because I need to unscramble letters.
This time, I just read the words.
And I remember thinking…
“My daddy told me wrong!”
All those years.
All those warnings.
All that fear.
And here I was…
at 50…
smoking marijuana…
and I was perfectly fine.
Or so I thought.
Because that’s when I started thinking about my daddy.
And that’s when I realized…
maybe Daddy wasn’t wrong.
Maybe I was asking the wrong question.
You see, Daddy wasn’t giving me a scientific analysis of marijuana.
He wasn’t standing there with a PowerPoint presentation explaining THC, cannabinoids, and neurological effects.
Daddy was trying to do something much simpler.
He was trying to protect me.
And sometimes…
that’s what parents do.
They give you a rule before they give you the explanation.
When you’re young, you think they’re trying to control you.
You think they’re old-fashioned.
You think they don’t understand the world you’re growing up in.
And sometimes…
you even think they’re just wrong.
But as you get older…
you start to understand something.
Your parents weren’t always trying to control your choices.
Sometimes…
they were trying to protect your future.
Think about it.
When your parent says,
“Don’t touch that.”
You want to know why.
But they don’t always have time to explain that it’s hot.
Sometimes they just want you to keep your hand out of the fire.
And that’s what my daddy was doing.
He knew what he knew because of what he had experienced.
He had seen things.
He had lived things.
And he understood consequences that I didn’t understand yet.
And that’s something I think we sometimes miss about our parents.
Their warnings aren’t always about the thing itself.
Sometimes…
they’re about everything that can happen around the thing.
The people.
The environment.
The decisions that follow.
The habits that develop.
The doors that open…
and the doors that close.
And there’s another thing that made me think differently about all of this.
If you look throughout history, marijuana and other plants weren’t always viewed the way we view them today.
Different cultures used plants in ceremonies, traditions, and rituals.
Think about the Native American peace pipe.
The pipe wasn’t simply about smoking.
It represented something.
Coming together.
Peace.
Reconciliation.
Community.
And that made me think about how easily we can lose the original meaning of something.
Something can start as tradition…
and become commerce.
Something can start as ceremony…
and become a product.
Something can be used responsibly by one person…
and become destructive in the hands of another.
And that’s where I began to understand my father’s warning differently.
Because maybe the lesson wasn’t:
“Marijuana is always going to destroy you.”
Maybe the lesson was:
“Be careful.”
Maybe it was:
“Don’t let something control you.”
Maybe it was:
“Don’t put your future at risk for a temporary experience.”
And maybe…
it was simply:
“Son, I love you enough to tell you no.”
That’s a powerful thing.
Because as children, we don’t always recognize love when it comes in the form of a boundary.
We recognize love when somebody gives us something.
When somebody hugs us.
When somebody tells us they love us.
But sometimes love sounds like:
“No.”
Sometimes love sounds like:
“Don’t do that.”
Sometimes love sounds like:
“You’re going to thank me later.”
And sometimes…
it sounds like an old man standing on a porch saying,
“I better not catch you all out there smoking that stuff.”
[Laughter]
Now, did I eventually smoke marijuana?
Yes.
Did the sky fall?
No.
Did I survive?
Yes.
But looking back, I’ve learned something much more valuable than whether my first experience was good or bad.
I’ve learned that wisdom and information aren’t always the same thing.
I thought Daddy was giving me information.
But Daddy was giving me wisdom.
And wisdom doesn’t always come with an explanation.
Sometimes it comes as a warning.
Sometimes it comes as a boundary.
Sometimes it comes from somebody who has already made mistakes…
so you don’t have to make the same ones.
And that brings me to the lesson I really want to leave with you today.
If your father is still living…
talk to him.
Don’t just ask him what he told you.
Ask him why.
Ask him what he experienced.
Ask him what he learned.
Ask him what he wishes he’d known when he was your age.
Because one day…
you may discover that some of the things your parents told you didn’t make sense when you were 15…
or 20…
or even 30.
But at 50…
you may finally understand.
And you may look back and say…
“Daddy told me wrong.”
But then…
if you’re lucky…
you’ll pause.
You’ll think about it.
And you’ll realize…
Daddy wasn’t trying to tell me what the world was.
He was trying to tell me…
how to survive it.
And maybe that’s what fathers do.
They can’t walk every road for us.
They can’t make every decision for us.
They can’t keep us from every mistake.
But they can stand at the beginning of the road…
point toward the danger…
and say:
“Don’t go that way.”
And sometimes…
we won’t understand why.
Sometimes…
we’ll ignore them.
Sometimes…
we’ll even prove them wrong.
But if we’re fortunate enough to live long enough…
we may discover something.
The greatest lesson wasn’t whether Daddy was right or wrong.
The greatest lesson was that…
Daddy cared enough to warn me.
And that…
was never wrong.
I am human. Are you?
Now smoke that over.
#IamHumanRu