Arthur Cox: Anything you do, you have to be happy doing it. Because if you’re not happy doing it, you’re not going to do it. Don’t do it for the money. Do it because that’s what you want. Money is always going to come to you if you’re right.
What makes my day is the kids and the teachers. The number one thing is, I didn’t live to do it. I’m going to be 65 next year. 66, I done did all I can do. I have to leave it to somebody else. We have to leave it to somebody that wants it. I can’t find that person. That person has to find himself. [Wisdom] gives you an idea [of] which way you want to go in life. Sometimes we got that wisdom inside of us so much. There’s always something on the other side that can make us go and do. While we’re above ground, do all we can do. It ain’t going to do no good sitting there bringing me no flowers. Bring me some flowers while I’m living.
Realize, records are always made to be beat. You put your best in it. When you put your best in anything, you ain’t got to look back and say, ‘Uh-oh, I missed something. Uh-uh, I didn’t did it.’ You done did it. You done put your best in it. That’s who it makes who you.
You can’t blame nobody but you. When you doing it, it’s always going to be hard in the good. But never give up. When you give up, you look for excuses. Always keep riding. If you can learn to deal with the harder, you can deal with the bad. Everything ain’t going to be peaches and cream.
Remember, everybody ain’t going to like you who you are. But if you like yourself, that’s all you need. Friends is a dime a dozen. The one standing by you, that’s your friend. When there ain’t nothing, when you go through a storm and they ain’t got nothing by you, you say, ‘Uh-oh, Mr. Cox, I ain’t got nobody.’ But you don’t need nobody. When you find out, you learn more about who you are. In your heart, you can only change to make somebody else happy. But in the room, you say, Mr. Arthur, it’s you who’s happy.
Grace Hu: Have you watched Dead Poets Society? The premise was connected to what you were talking about. The father wants his child to pursue what he did, medicine. But the child really finds his joy in theater. What would you say if their ideas of success diverge?
AC: We’re all going to have ideas for a kid. My kids, we want them to be better than us. But sometimes it never works out that way. Because kids got their own mind. You have to accept that. And it’s hard, you know. It’s hard either way it goes. When you realize what they want to do, then you have to come together. They’re going to live that life, not us. Any life that you pick and choose, that’s going to be your path. When you go down that path, you’re doing it for you. Then when you go there and do that other stuff, your mind’s not going to be focused on what you want to do. But you’re doing it to make somebody else happy. See, you’re either going to be happy or somebody else is going to be happy. When you realize that, then that’s when you go to change.
I wanted my boys to play squash, but they didn’t like it. I couldn’t make them play. If they don’t like it, it’s all right. So we can have a different dream, but they have to have their own dream. When you have kids, you want them to do the right thing. But sometime in their heart, they’re going to go down another path. And then you’ll see it in the long run, but it’s going to hurt you.
You have to look at both sides, too, and think about it. Just don’t jump into nothing because you’ve got an idea. Every idea [is] not going to work. You can open up a business. You know what people don’t understand about opening up a business? When you open up a business, everybody’s thinking in their head they want to get rich. It don’t work like that. Businesses go how you will. See, sometimes we open up a business, it’s like making a cake. We can make that cake and have a line way down there. And we realize when we got too many people, the product change. When the product change, the land change. See where I’m going with it? But if we keep the same taste that when we started, what we’re going to finish, it’ll keep the same flow. Of course, when we get so busy, we forget where we started, what got us to be busy.
That’s when people get mad because you’re not happy when you start doing it and didn’t want to do it, and you’re not doing it right. But when you’re happy walking there, doing it, everything come together. That’s where we fell on opening up a business, because we don’t keep the same cake, keep the same line. Because when we get too busy, we have lost control of where we started and where we’re going to finish. When you learn to be where you started, where you’re going to finish, you have the same people coming. Because they know that taste, that taste bought them in there. It wasn’t a price. You can have a $100 price, [and] over here they have $10. They’re not worried about the price. They’re worried about the taste.
Always remember, look down that hall. ‘It’s an opportunity,’ said Mr. Cox. You can only go left or you’re going to go straight. And when you realize that, golly, now I’m in a big league. Which way I go. It’s like going to a new school. You ever know when you come here, when you first got here, you were kind of scared. It was something for you. You went from a small school to a big school, a lot of folks. And it took you a while to get to program. You see, you went to changing. As you kept going to another level, your whole body changed. You changed. Then when you leave this, it’s going to even get harder. Everything gets more complicated as you grow, as you start climbing that ladder. College is going to get hard. And then when you realize, golly, it’s getting harder and harder, but you never give up. Never open up a door. Don’t let nobody else close it. Even when it gets hard, something’s always going to be easy. [I] always say, ‘Get up and walk away when that thing gets hard and get your mind together.’ When you’re trying to figure everything out, you get frustrated. When you come back, you got a whole different mind, a whole different person.
It’s like if you go to a mall and buy some new shoes. When you put them new shoes on, you got a whole different walk. When you take them old ones off, you’ve been walking. You say, ‘Oh, golly, I got some new tennis. I got a new flow. I got a different look.’ It brings the whole technique to you. It ain’t what you’re spending on the tennis shoes. It’s how you’re marking the tennis shoes, how you’re walking in them. You can go buy one $500. You can go in and buy one $10. Whatever you put on or how you make them look good with your outfit, and folks be saying, ‘Where’d you get them tennis shoes? They so high.’ And then when you say in your mind, ‘Golly, I just paid $10 for these, and they didn’t know.’ See what I’m saying? It’s like whatever you put on, you bring the best with it. It’s not what you’re spending on it. It’s how you’re marking it. It doesn’t cost you nothing. That’s what you call using your head, using your mind. Mind is only coming to you to get your ideas. You’ll know your best idea when you’re by yourself.
Every day you leave here, you come up with a different idea. When you’re by yourself, your thoughts come together. And that’s what will open you up, give you new ideas. The higher grade you get, the smarter you get. There’s nothing you can’t do if you don’t want to. When you put your mind to it, you got it. Whatever school you go to, when you walk in there, you close the door. When somebody else closes the door, you don’t want to be in there. You get the best out of it because somebody paid for it. You have to go make them happy. You have two choices. Well, Mr. Arthur, my dad ain’t going to pay for my college. I have to go along with what they’re going to do. That’s the understanding. But make sure you get the best out of both of them because they’re paying for it. You got to make them happy. As soon as you go to making bad grades, they’re going to be mad. So keep up something to make them happy because you’re pulling too low. You’re making you happy, and you’re going to make them happy. And when you walk out of there, that smile you’re going to see on their face, you’re going to say, ‘Golly, Mr. Arthur, I see what you’re talking about.’ You gave them that smile because you finished. You did your part.
Go for your goal. Even if you fail, get back up. Dust yourself off. Look around you and cry a little bit. There’s nothing wrong with crying. Crying brings that strong feeling. You don’t have to cry. You don’t have to wait nine times, shake your jeans off. Whatever’s going to turn you on, go do it. Then you’ll know who you is. But when you sit there and fall back when you fail at something, that’s not you. When you say, ‘Uh-uh, something I didn’t do, I’m going back.’ Then when you walk out of there, you’ve got the opportunity to close the door. If there’s somebody else closing the door, you open the door and close it because you’ve finally done it. It’s like anything, never give up. When you give up, that’s when you fail. Anything you sign up for, finish. Never give up. You don’t even know how to do it, but you try
You have to be having a good mind and a good thought and half crazy. You’ve got to have two things because you can deal in with everybody’s drama, everybody’s thoughts, but sometimes they say, Mr. Cox, how do you get your thoughts? I feed off of nails. And sometimes, well, you open up the door and say, ‘I’ve got a lot on my mind,’ but sometimes you listen to somebody else. They’ve got a longer book. That’s how you get your thoughts and what makes you stronger, makes you want to stand up.
There’s so much tragedy going on in life. People need somebody to give them a smile, make their day, because you never know what they’re going through. And that sometimes, a smile [versus when] you give somebody $20, that smile goes all day and they need that. Nowadays, even the kids got hard work going through their mind. Tragedy, you never know. Sometimes they might even fail a test. They need that smile to lift them back up, put them back on the right road, because everybody’s not going to pass, because they didn’t put the right touch on it.
