A Beacon of Hope: Sly Stallone

Jon Snowball
Jul 27, 2017 · 5 min read

As a fresh out of uni 23-year-old with nothing but a degree in Media and Communication (LOL), it’s hard to figure out how I can provide myself with every opportunity to be happy at work.

With media (LOL, again!) providing me with such a broad spectrum of knowledge (triple LOL), it’s even harder to figure out which direction I want to take my life.

Working out what I’m passionate about and what I can see myself doing in ten years.

Twenty years.

Forty years.

For a lifetime.

Is a difficult decision, but one that doesn’t need to be rushed.

However, I wish I put more time into my passions while at university to fast track the process.

Since graduating, I’ve been struggling with mental health.

Constantly grappling with all these seemingly indecipherable dilemmas and attempting to answer all the scary, existential questions about life.

Realistically, I know I’ll never be able to answer any of them.

There are days when I feel good, and on the good days when I’m submitting a job application, I feel hopeful that sooner or later someone will recognise I have “talent” and “potential” and give me the chance to prove myself.

(“Talents” and “potential” I put no time into and thus scarcely exist)

But, of course, where there are good days there have to be bad ones;

On bad days, I get sucked into a dark abyss of self-deprecation:

I think I’m doomed to live a life drifting between dead-end jobs,

renting shitty apartments in crappy neighbourhoods,

never earning enough money to ever retire

and eventually I’ll end up working until all my loved ones will slowly disintegrate into burrows of the city I can only dream of being welcomed into, and all I end up with is an insurmountable debt and a few cats sniffing me while I stare at the ceiling silently with drool running down my chin.

It’s the best I could ever hope for on bad days.

Now, obviously, my rational-self knows that these self-loathing thoughts are a bit extreme.

However, until my psych and I have devised a reliable coping mechanism to quell these ideas, there’s but one thought that pulls me out of the abyss.

One shining light,

one muscle-bound glimmer of hope that whispers to me gently when I’m feeling down,

“Yo, Mitch. We can do this.”

“ … It ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done!”

Encouraging me gently with his slurring voice

That ever present positive energy in my life is, of course:

Sylvester, Motherflippin’, Stallone.

Warning: video will induce tears and a fire burning inside willing you to succeed.

Let me begin by stating, that according to all accounts, Sly Stallone is a smart guy.

I mean he wrote the original Rocky for eff’s Sake … the man’s a straight up genius.

However, the characters he has been typecast to do not reflect this intelligence;

In fact, they outrightly declare the exact opposite.

His two most famous characters, Rambo and Rocky, can barely string a sentence together.

Sure, you know what Rambo is supposed to be saying, but you have no idea what he’s actually saying.

To me, this is what makes Stallone so magical.

As he slurs through “meaningful” monologues, you are required to fill in the blanks.

You replace the words that Stallone can’t quite sound out phonetically with words that you think up.

These replacement words often come to the surface from deep-seated places of your unconscious.

For this reason, what Stallone and his films mean to you is merely a creation of your imagination,

your unconscious,

your psyche.

To me, Stallone is a God amongst men.

A man who has succeeded in the face of adversity. A man who lived out the American dream!

Sly Stallone lookin’ smug as fuck in front of his mansion

When I first watched Rocky as a 12-year boy, I knew I was witnessing something magical.

On screen I saw a big, muscle-bound man with a face that looked like it had been beat one too many times.

A man who could hardly string a sentence together, assumedly after suffering from a mild stroke.

Yet, in spite of all that, there he was … on the screen.

He was the leading actor.

He was the star of the show!

How?

It’s now been over 40 years since Rocky‘s original release, and the myth of Stallone continues to grow.

In 2015, he was nominated for an Oscar, his first nod since Rocky.

It’s only fitting that his nomination comes for his performance in Creed (2015), in which he reprised his role as Rocky Balboa.

Now, let’s just take a minute to digest this miracle.

Stallone’s a man whose characters have become such a prominent part of his public image that his real identity is practically unknown.

He’s a guy whose parents all but abandoned him during his childhood,

a man who appears to drool as he slurs through his sentences

a man, nay, a God who can’t even dress himself his muscles are so big (probably).

Yet, in spite of all of this, he has been granted a nomination for the highest order of achievement in acting: an Oscar

People often speak of the American dream in literature, allude to it as something unattainable, like a mirage while crossing the Sahara.

The American dream promises unimaginable wealth, fame and security, and dangles them in front of your face.

Yet like a dog chasing its tale, the American dream is scarcely captured, and even when it is, it’s simply not enough.

You need more, so you continue chasing the dream, until you’ve bitten off more than you could chew and you’re left with nothing but a stump where your tail once was.

Many have pursued the dream so long that they’ve lost all sight of it.

Not Sylvester Stallone.

No, not ol’ Sly.

Ol’ Sly has jumped over the abyss that is the American dream and he’s all but conquered it.

He is too close to the edge to fall in now.

Ahead of him is a clear plain to the promised land where they have all six Rocky films and Creed playing on repeat.

And while he didn’t win his Oscar for Creed, his nomination was enough to confirm his holy status:

SLY IS GOD!

His nomination was a win for mankind - not to mention my confidence and sanity.

The ultimate underdog.

My beacon of hope.

You’ve changed me more than you’ll ever know, sweet prince.

As long as we have Sly Stallone, there is hope for us all.

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