When I was young, my mother used to say things that felt like knives wrapped in wisdom. Sharp. Precise. And always cutting a little too close to the bone.
“If you’re going to be something,” she said once, “be the best. If you’re going to be a thief, be the best thief.”
I remember sitting there, seething—convinced she was calling me a failure in advance, like she saw a mugshot waiting in my future. I was a dramatic child, sure. But I also heard the world louder than most, and in her tone I thought I heard the echo of disappointment.
It took years—decades, really—for me to understand that she wasn’t predicting my downfall.
She was warning me about mediocrity.
About sleepwalking through life.
About the quiet tragedy of wasting whatever small fire was burning inside me.
Craft, Seen and Unseen
My Uncle Michael understood this before I did.
He was the janitor at my elementary school—a man whose name most kids probably never knew. But I knew him. I knew the way his shirts were always pressed, his shoes always were always shined, the faint smell of Pine-Sol that followed him like a badge of honor.
He wasn’t just cleaning floors.
He was restoring order to chaos, one hallway at a time.
That school gleamed. The floors reflected the ceiling lights like calm water. Even as a kid, I could tell that he took pride in what most people never noticed.
Years later, I heard he started his own cleaning company. Built something from nothing. Took what the world might have dismissed and made it into a craft.
That’s the word that sticks with me now.
Craft.
Learning to Show Up
I didn’t realize it at the time, but when I sat alone in my room scribbling stories, I was chasing the same truth my uncle had already mastered.
The art of showing up.
The quiet dignity of repetition.
The beauty of care.
I thought I was just escaping—drawing worlds because the real one felt too heavy. But now I see it.
Every sentence was me learning how to hold a broom, so to speak.
Every paragraph, another hallway swept clean of doubt.
My mother’s words echo differently now.
If you’re going to be something—be all the way in.
Don’t just stand at the doorway of your own potential, waiting for someone else to invite you through.
Keep Showing Up
Because the world will always give you a reason to stop.
It’ll whisper that you’re too late.
Too tired.
Too small.
Too unimportant.
But the work—your work—doesn’t care about any of that.
It only asks that you keep showing up.
So this is what I tell myself now:
If you’re going to be something, be the best.
If you’re going to write, write until your fingers hurt and your heart feels seen.
If you’re going to clean, make the floor shine like truth.
If you’re going to live, live like the world is watching—even when it’s not.
Somewhere between my mother’s harsh tone and my uncle’s quiet excellence, I found my own reflection.
And maybe that’s what this whole life is about—not becoming what they wanted you to be, but becoming what they were trying to show you all along.
Not perfection.
Just presence.
Just care.
Just the craft.
Kyle J. Hayes
kylehayesblog.com
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