What life advice do you have for students?
When you try to put things in young folks, it’s not going to be [what you think]. You can give them that wisdom, some of them will catch on to it, some of them won’t. When it comes to you, see, [knowledge takes time]. Sometimes [as] you get older, the more knowledge will come to you.
If you want to do something, you go and do it. But you make sure that’s what you like doing. Some people go do things they don’t want to do, [so] when they get to doing it, they don’t like it. Then some people do things that they get into, ‘Oh, I like this.’ But anything that you do for a period of time, it’s [gets] challenging. That’s when you see people go somewhere else and try something different. But have something that you like doing, start out [with] what you’re good at. You ain’t got to be good at nothing, but you’ll learn to be good. As you go at it, [and] every day you [should] go at something, if you’re not good at it [yet], keep going. Then you’ll learn it, and then you might like it. But try what you like.
When you get up in the morning, you know in your heart, ‘Man, I’m going to make me some good grades.’ Everything ain’t going to work that way. [Someone might say,] ‘Hey, I just studied harder.’ [You need to leave it in the past.]
You know, you’re stressed trying to make it [in] this, [in] that. But all you got to do is sit down and get up and walk away and come back. Then you’ll have a better view of what you’re going to do. Because when you’re under stress and trying to make everybody happy, it’s not going to work. You have to make you happy. And when you realize, ‘Hey, Mr. Cox, I’m going to be a nurse.’ But when you realize you’re going to be a nurse, that might be what you’re just doing for somebody else. That ain’t your field. Then when you look out one day, you’re walking away. Now I’m going to do my dream.
You can always go back trying to make somebody else happy. But in the long run, you’re not going to be happy. That’s when we listen to the older people, [trying to tell our kids], ‘Son, I want you to be this and be this.’ They ain’t about what they have to want to do. You know, you teach a kid playing sports. He come up, and all of a sudden, he quit because he burned out. You start burning him out. He’s just doing it to make somebody happy, and then when he realizes it ain’t what he want to do, it’s good. That’s my advice.
Then when you say, ‘Well, I’m going to be happy, you’re not.’ Until you realize, people don’t understand. When you fall, say, ‘I tried this and I failed.’ Don’t give up. When you give up, your blessing is right there. And this, I think all the time I’ve been doing this, it’s no more challenge. I’m going to be 65 years old. What’s [making me] happy doing it? It’s y’all. You got something, I tell anybody, you got to have something to make you want to come. To see that smile. Because sometimes you listen, you hear so many tragedies, just losing somebody. It hurts you. You learn to deal with pain and give them something: that smile.
Has this appeared in your life in any way?
Well, it learned me things. You never get too old to learn. We have to open up. Your legacy will go good if you teach somebody. When they walk out of here, they’ll know you put something in them. But if you sit there and hold all that inside of you, what good that is? Somebody had to teach you. When you get what you want to get, you teach somebody. It keeps going. Your legacy is never going to leave. You might think, ‘Well, nobody wants it.’ Somebody wants it. [But] you can’t save the world, because you’d be screwed up too. Somebody’s going to come in here, whatever you teach them to do, somebody’s going to be better.
Sometimes your mind goes from bad to good. You can’t control that, but you have to be strong and look at somebody, see somebody down the hallway with that smile. It takes you [to] a whole different ballgame. Tragedy ain’t going to never leave, but that smile is right there in your heart. It changes you, and that’s what I’m going to do. My last few, what I’m going to do. When I get ready to leave, I did my part. I ain’t got to look back. Anything you do and you think you did your part, you have. Somebody else can come in. When you always see somebody, and his record’s always been broken, that’s a good thing. You have to put a different spin on it, make it easy for them, [and] you have done your part. That’s my life. You see it all the time, and that’s a blessing for anybody.
