…Ngopi dulu yuk…

Since the last of month or so I’ve been listening to Bon Jovi’s Cross Road album. The songs have been stacked there on my 60 GB iPod for a long time, but I’ve never put so much attention to them. I liked soft music and still like it, but at the moment I feel that something needs to be changed, or added, to give balance, or whatever explanation can explain it. Something rocks. Something bold. Something tough.

And last night I bought their other album called Have a Nice Day. The songs, they are electric! They make me get charged, you know, the music, the scream of the guitar, the beats of the drums, and the vibrant voice of the vocalist, and also the content of the songs. The lyrics. There is something big inside each song. They radiate hope, enthusiasm, energy, which would influence anyone who listens to them.

That led me to a curiosity for digging up more information about this band. Wikipedia would be a good source, I thought. So, I hit the keyboard and read what people wrote about Bon Jovi, their history, their hits, their achievements, and so on.

From just a short text, I can get the sense of what lies beneath their success. What makes them to become a legend. A world class legend. Jon Bon Jovi started the band as a “nobody”, and literally nobody. It was never an easy start for them. For some years they’ve never even reached the top of the roof, and absolutely never the sky. But they never gave up. There must be some other vocalist or musicians who have the same or even better quality compared to them. But it is obvious that there were not so many who adopted the same quality of Bon Jovi’s mentality.

Yea yea… But they are such talented people. And plus they are fortunate and destined to succeed. I can guess that some would think so.

True that they are talented. But the biggest talent is not the musical talent. It is the repeated positive mentality. They repeat and repeat and repeat that mentality so that becomes their identity. Talent is constructive attitude, mentality, actions which a person cultivates in. That is the expanded definition of talent, which is more powerful and it puts the person in charge of taking action about it, rather than just wishing that he was born with that wired in musical skills or built in confidence over the stage, and so on.

And about fortunate and destiny? Yes luck must have been on their side, but they also have put a lot of discipline in what they have been doing. Much more than average people would have done, I think.  And…. Maybe Bon Jovi thought that they must do this and this and that in order to succeed, just as much as most people would think what they should do. But apparently not so many people do what they think they must do. That is why there is not many Bon Jovis in this world.

Reality proofs that their efforts were paid back. They are now one of the all the time best musicians in this world. With their determination they have been keeping their wheel rolling. Wheel of fortune. Wheel of destiny. Wheel of life.

Wait a second! Wheel huh?? Now I am thinking about a wheel. Wheels like the tires on a car. Law of physics says that the force needed to start turning a wheel is always bigger than the force needed to keep it turning when it’s already in motion. I wonder if this is also true for Wheel of life? Wheel of fortune? Wheel of destiny? Could this be the explanation of why Bon Jovi could grow to become a literally giant rock legend? They have kept at least minimum the same amount of force when they managed to start their wheel, and using that force to keep the wheel turning faster and faster? If we compare with riding on a bicycle, you see, when we start is always the heaviest part. Once the wheels are in motion, we need lesser force to keep the bike in motion. And thanks to technology, by moving the gears we can increase the speed even more.

I think this must also apply to wheel of destiny. If only we don’t give up too soon, we will be surprised by what we can actually achieve. Not to give up, especially when the wheel is not starting to move yet. No matter how many difficulties, failures, or even rejections we must get through before the first kick makes the wheel moving. It worth the efforts, especially when we are talking about our own wheel of destiny.