I never wrote things down to remember; I always wrote things down so I could forget. - Matthew McConaughey

If all that I would want to do, would be to sit and talk to you… would you listen?

When I was 15 years old, I had a very important person in my life come to me and say “who’s your hero?” And I said, “I don’t know, I gotta think about that. Give me a couple of weeks.” I come back two weeks later, this person comes up and says “who’s your hero?” I said, “I thought about it. You know who it is? It’s me in 10 years.” So I turned 25. Ten years later, that same person comes to me and says, “So, are you a hero?” And I was like, “not even close. No, no, no.” She said, “Why?” I said, “Because my hero’s me at 35.” So you see every day, every week, every month and every year of my life, my hero’s always 10 years away. I’m never gonna be my hero. I’m not gonna attain that. I know I’m not, and that’s just fine with me because that keeps me with somebody to keep on chasing.

Wow, he’d just recited to me a version of what I’d said to myself in Australia when I’d refused to call the Dooleys Mum and Pop. A double whammy of African proverbs: They are not trying to win arguments of right or wrong. They are trying to understand each other. That’s different. (Hey, America, we could learn from this.) The next morning we continued toward the Bandiagara Escarpment.