George Chase, Jr. is an amazing human being of many talents. Singer, songwriter, and guitarist for the pop-punk band The Sublets, he is by his own admission, not a man of few words. He freely admits that he absolutely loves to talk with people. Whether it’s himself interviewing someone for his upcoming web series, Happy Hour Sessions, or being interviewed here at Digital Beat Magazine, he is probably one of the most intelligent and philosophically oriented artists that you’ll ever come across. From an early childhood as the youngest in his family, through personal tragedy and business ventures, to personal redemption in returning to making the music that he loves, George Chase, Jr. bares more than a little a bit of his soul when supplying his personal life experiences for those around him.
Digital Beat Magazine:
Hi George! So first, how are you doing? I know you had some shows you had to cancel just recently because your family came down with COVID. I just want to check in with you guys and see how everyone is doing.
George Chase, Jr.:
Well, thank you. Yeah, that sucked (laughing). My wife has pretty much been pregnant or we’ve had a small child with us for the last three years. We have our third child, due the beginning of September.
DBM:
Oh man, congratulations!
George Chase, Jr.:
Thank you. Our oldest just turned three, not even a month ago. So we’ll have three under three and a half. Our kids have pretty much grown up during a pandemic. And because of that, we were pretty cautious in the beginning because there were so many unknowns and we didn’t want the kiddos getting sick. Shows were canceled anyway, so I was just doing a lot more writing and recording and stuff from home. And if I went into the studio, it was a pretty safe environment. But, we didn’t expect it to be this, multi-year thing.
DBM:
Exactly.
George Chase, Jr.:
And so all that being said, we were very diligent in the beginning and never got it. I never had a positive test until two weeks ago. It was a bummer that we got it. I’ve never had to cancel a show in my life. Especially pre-pandemic, man…if you were just a little sick it was just like, “The show must go on.”
But yeah, thanks for asking.
DBM:
The important thing here is, everybody’s better or are getting better, and that’s really the best thing that you can hope for coming out of something like this.
George Chase, Jr.:
Amen. Absolutely.
DBM
So new band, The Sublets out of Cleveland, Ohio. You know, I’m looking at a little bit of your bio, and I’m seeing…singer, songwriter, guitarist…magician?
George Chase, Jr.:
Yea…(laughing)
DBM:
I gotta admit, that’s not really the combination that you find on the resume of a musician. How did being a magician come about?
George Chase, Jr.:
So, I grew up in a family that was always playing cards. Whether it was pinochle, or poker, or whatever. When I learned to add when I was in kindergarten or first grade or whatever, I learned by playing blackjack with my dad. I was so fast with cards, but then when it came to numbers on a flashcard, I just struggled. Some of my earliest memories were just sitting around during different holidays and stuff, playing poker with my family. I was also the youngest of four children, by a lot, like – I was an accident and a half.
DBM:
(laughing)
George Chase, Jr.:
I was the youngest by 11 years, and my oldest brother was 17 years older than me. So, I discovered there were other ways to get attention. It was performing. It was making people laugh. It was doing tricks. When I was in seventh grade, I moved from Ohio out to Lake Tahoe, Nevada. It was the middle of seventh grade, I knew nobody. But I was like, “Man, what better way to break the ice and get to know people than by doing card tricks! I’m gonna make all these friends at school. They’re gonna think I’m so cool because of all these card tricks!” And it completely backfired, and I just became the magic nerd.
I was also playing music as well, but magic was really the thing that I did at school everyday. You can’t exactly bring your guitar to school, but you can easily bring a deck of cards. But for the most part, I don’t really advertise it anymore. It’s a cool thing to break the ice and do it at parties and stuff, but I don’t really perform much.
DBM:
Now a lot of people don’t really know this, but this isn’t exactly your first foray into the music scene. Your personal story is inspirational to be brutally honest.
George Chase, Jr.:
Thank you.
DBM:
I was just wondering if you wouldn’t mind sharing some of that with our readers and other artists and musicians, who might be at that crossroads in their life. Where they’re deciding, “Okay, you know what? I gave up on music 10 years ago, but I still have that itch in the back of my head where I need to pick up my guitar, I need to pick up the drums…” or whatever their instrument is, or somebody else who might be at that same crossroad in their life saying, “You know what, I’m really not getting anywhere, why am I still doing this…”
George Chase, Jr.:
You know what the scariest part of that whole thing is? If you still have the itch? Good for you.
I went so far down the path of kidding myself thinking I could survive without music, that I didn’t even have the itch anymore. I didn’t even remember what the itch was like. And it’s so odd in hindsight, looking at that because it was just so numb of a feeling. I was 22 years old, it was December, and find out my brother died in a car crash. And it was 10 days before Christmas. I just didn’t know how to process that. I’d never really lost anybody that close before, and I didn’t really understand grief. I didn’t know what I was dealing with. All I knew, I was a 22 year old kid on top of the world. I was finishing up college, my band seemed like it had its legs, I had wonderful friends and a girlfriend…and then my brother dies. It hit me hard, but I was like, “Okay, it was a good kick in the ass to realize that life’s short and let’s go, I’m all in. I’m going to make music my passion and my career.” So how do I do this?
I had this idea that I was going to buy a bar and really just push local music. I find the bar that I wanted, a small little local spot. I buy it in July, and a month later my mom passes away. And it was completely unexpected. I bought the bar like July 12th, July 29th she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and then she was gone about three weeks later. And it just gutted me. It’s hard enough losing your brother, but then to lose your mom. And then a few months later, my uncle passes away who is like my second father. He was the one who, if we were ever going to play cards, he was the first person that we would call. He’s the first person who’d come over on a Friday night and hang out just to have drinks with my parents. When I went to Vegas for my 21st birthday, he was one of the first invited. So for my uncle to pass away, my mom and my brother, within 16 months of each other was just…I couldn’t do it.
DBM:
That’s really hard for anyone. That’s just such a lot of grief in such a short amount of time.
George Chase, Jr.:
At the time you’re going through it, you just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I didn’t realize how affected I would be by that. When you’re going through it you’re just like, “Okay, so this is life. People die. Great. Who’s next?” I was constantly waiting for the next person to die. I didn’t want to be on stage anymore. I didn’t want to be, that smiley, happy lead singer anymore. I really didn’t realize how sad or depressed I was. And the one thing in life that I truly believe, I was put on this planet to perform and to make the world a happier place. But, I no longer wanted to do that. I didn’t want to live my purpose, and I threw myself into work with the bar scene. Luckily, I never drank until I was 30. I’ve never done drugs. If I did my story probably would have ended there.
So over the years I had found myself in more than one dicey situation, and I was like, this is not what I want to beinvolved with. You fall into that pattern where you’re sleeping in, eating a lot of unhealthy foods, staying up all night. It can be unhealthy and dangerous. And you’re repeating it every day. It seems like a 22, 23 year old’s dream, until you do it for a few years. Every day it’s the same thing and you’re just…tired. So that was it. I needed to get out of this bar industry.
I did restaurants for several years, but for several reasons, we closed the restaurants. We didn’t file bankruptcy – which was very important to me to make good with my employees and my vendors, to bow out on a good note, or as good as you can get with closing a business.
Two things came out of that. First – nobody teaches you how to really fail. You go to school, you read books, watch movies and everybody says, “Try harder, do this, do that, you’re not working hard enough…” I was working so hard. By the end, I was working like 80 to 100 hours a week. And if I wasn’t working, I was thinking about working. It just got to a point where I had to stop. They don’t teach you how to bow out gracefully. And I think that was a huge lesson. Secondly, my self-worth was decimated at that point. The only thing that helped, and to bring this whole story back around to music, is a pretty serendipitous story. The restaurant I was with was booked to do a catering gig for an outdoor music venue. It was a thousand person occupancy theater, outside, on the side of a grass hill kind of thing. And they didn’t have an opening act. So I open my big fat mouth and say, “Oh! You guys just want somebody to play acoustic covers for like, 40 minutes? I can do that.” I’m thinking I can do that in my sleep. Sure! Easy!
Well, we had a very brief conversation to clear up what I was going to do. And then I sat there and it starts dawning on me…I haven’t played music on stage in eight years. Do I remember how to play these songs? What did I just do? Well, it’s too late now, we already agreed to it. And my fingers…I don’t have calluses on my fingers anymore. So when I start to play, I’m through the second song, playing everything way too fast because I’m freaking out. And my voice is already gone, it’s worn out. But I did it. And overall it was great. And I got off stage. and that was the moment that I realized… That reawakened a feeling in me. I started to realize that I got out of music because I was so hurt and I didn’t want to smile, I couldn’t find happiness anymore. And now I’m really re-finding my purpose. So as decimated as I was, when I shut down the restaurants, I also realized I had this new vigor for life, to realize that now I get to live my purpose. And that was humbling.
But man, you take eight years off you forget some stuff. But after working at it again, it eventually came back. And I also realized that I was going to do it differently this time. The old band I was in, I didn’t really treat it like a business. At least how I would treat it today. We were kids, we were having so much fun with it. Three good friends playing music. But this time I’m going to be much more purposeful about the decisions we’re making and how we’re going to release things in the image that we’re portraying. I didn’t want to release a single song until we had at least three songs ready to go. And the funny part of that is, we had songs ready and we were just about to pull the trigger when the pandemic hit. There’s a whole different story there about the evolution of The Sublets, but at the core of it we’re a pop-punk band. And that’s what I’ve always wanted to be.
DBM:
That’s really amazing. I was actually going to touch on that a little bit, about the progression of The Sublets. How you as a musician, when you’re trying to define your own sound…Okay, maybe we’re a four piece band, well, maybe we’re a five piece band or we’re gonna have a keyboardist. What’s that process like when you’re trying to define the sound that you want to have?
George Chase, Jr.:
I knew that I wanted the band to have a pop rock vibe to it. My favorite band is Green Day. Unapologetically, unabashedly, Green Day is the reason I picked up a guitar in the first place and the reason I picked a bass in the first place. I grew up listening to a bunch of different stuff like Buddy Holly, Cyndi Lauper, Kingston Trio, Celine Dion, Metallica, Backstreet Boys, Richard Marx, Garth Brooks, the list can go on. But it’s all “pop” music. With some of the country music, the inflection is different, or some of the punk stuff is a little snotty, or metal is a little faster and harder, or boy band stuff is just a little prettier in the delivery with more harmonies, but it’s all pop music. It’s all good music. So, I always knew that the pop rock / pop-punk kind of sound runs the deepest in me as far as a musical influence.
When The Sublets formed five years ago, pop-punk wasn’t the resurgence that it is now. We weren’t doing this via Tik-Tok, MGK (Machine Gun Kelly) hadn’t put out his album, it was pre-renaissance of pop-punk. So, when we were playing this stuff back then, I was thinking – man, I want it to be raw and energetic. But that’s not what people are listening to right now. I want to perform for people. I want people to want to come to the show. I want them to feel happiness. So I was just trying to figure out what’s the best way that I can do that. And we started the three-piece. We played the songs, it was like – well it needs to be a little more refined. Twenty One Pilots was hot. So we’re like – How do we achieve a little bit more reproduced sound with still having the raw energy that I crave? And so we thought about having synth keys, we had a second guitarist beefing up some of the sound. And, it sounded great. Except for the fact that, we kind of looked at each other and said – “It almost sounds like we’re a wedding band playing covers of rock songs, instead of just being a fucking rock band playing these rock songs.” And it was kind of enlightening to have that moment and be like, “No. We need to strip this back down and let it just be raw.” And it was funny because we made that decision and then not six months later, MGK comes out with his album, Tickets To My Downfall, and pop-punk becomes just the most crazy popular music genre ever again. Ok, here we go!
I needed to look at it and just say, “What is authentic to me?” I had to figure out what it was that I wanted to say, and how I wanted to say it. And luckily, people have liked it. It’s been really nice to have strangers start to notice us and say, “Oh! Hey! you guys are good! How do we come see you?” That’s the stuff that really is like, “Okay, we’re onto something. Let’s take this as far as we can take it.”
DBM:
Ok, so I have to ask – the band name, The Sublets. How did that come about?
George Chase, Jr.:
(laughing)I hated our name, I hated it (laughing).
Our drummer Stephen threw it out there early on. Actually, it’s kinda funny Taylor Swift was playing across town the same night that we were playing our first show, and we didn’t have a name. So, we just called ourselves the Swift Taylors. We figured it’d be funny. Eventually I actually had a name in my head that I had settled on. “This is it. This is our name. It’s got swagger, it was simple and marketable…” And nobody else liked it. I was like, “Screw you guys!” (laughing) We were batting around other names. And one of the early ones that was thrown in was The Sublets. I’m like – that is a stupid name. I don’t know what it would mean for the band. I struggle just saying it out loud. Like, I just don’t feel like it rolls off the tongue well. I just…I hated it. And then I was talking with one of my friends about it. And he comes from a very religious background. There are times that I would fill in playing music at his church with him if he needed a guitarist or bassist or keyboardist. He said, “You know, I think The Sublets is such a great name.”
I’m like, “Why?!”
He said, “Because in the grand scheme of things, we’re all just here kind of subletting the earth, and we’re stewards of this greater creation.” The spirit of what he was saying, the idea that we are all temporary, and we have these gifts that we are given and should enrich the world, enrich other people’s lives…once he put it that way, it was like…Man! This resonates with me. Dammit! Okay, it’s the name now. I am in. It’s just a little reminder that we are just temporary, so we’re going to try to make it the best time that we can make it.
DBM:
Well, that is definitely one way to look at it! You mentioned your drummer Stephen Nicholson when talking about the band name. How did you find Stephen and your bassist, Daniel Lee. Or did they find you to help round out your sound and the group itself?
George Chase, Jr.:
When I was getting back into music, I had a buddy who was still pretty active in the Cleveland music community. He told me about Stephen and Daniel and he was like, “Oh, man, they’re an amazing, amazing, rhythm section, and I think they’re both out of bands right now.” I was grateful they were not making music anywhere else. Because man – once we got in a room together and started playing…they’re the kind of musicians that make you better just by playing with them. They are incredible musicians. And I needed to get better real quick (laughing). I gave them a call, met them out for a drink at a bar, and talked to them about, “Hey, this is what I’m looking to do…” I was pitching the pop-punk stuff, and asking them if is this something they would be interested in? And they’re like – Yeah we’ll give it a try. That was five years ago. And we really haven’t looked back since.
DBM:
Are you guys writing music together, or are you pretty much the sole songwriter for the band itself?
George Chase, Jr.:
So generally what happens is, I will present part of an idea, like a chorus or a hook or a riff or something. Or sometimes I will demo out a whole song and bring it to the band. I’ve also got a couple of friends who are songwriters and I will let them listen. And sometimes they’ll be like, “Yeah, that’s great. Maybe tidy this up or change that,” Minor tweaks or whatever. Or sometimes they’ll be like, “Man, that chorus is great,” or “Man, that verse is bad. How do we make that stronger?”
I’m a huge proponent of just do the work. Write the songs. If you keep stopping and self-editing every five minutes, then you’re never gonna get anywhere. So just let it go. Write the song, what’s the worst thing that’s ever happened? Nobody hears it? Fine. But at least you go through the exercise of writing a song, and sometimes you strike gold. We might write five songs, but only one or two of them are really like actual songs. So let’s explore them. And then the other three or four either get gobbled back up, and we dismember them for other parts of other songs.
Wow. That was really graphic and gory imagery. Sorry about that! (laughing)
Once in a while we get a song that somebody else will bring it in. “The Fallout” is a perfect example, our first single was actually our other guitarist’s song, whose name is Britton. It was a song that he had written a bunch of years ago and wasn’t sure exactly what to do with it. He played me the demo, and I’m like, “Dude, this song is awesome!” But at first, I didn’t think I could actually sing it. I didn’t think that I could pull off some of the stuff that he was doing. So we were originally going to have him sing it. And then I took a crack at it and just had to figure out how to deliver a couple things differently and make it my own. And eventually, I was just like, “Oh, yeah, it’s a Sublets song, I love it!”
DBM:
I gotta admit – when your rep reached out to me and said, “Hey, I’ve got this band, they’ve released this song called “The Fallout”, what do you think?” You know, it really blew me away. I totally fell in love with it right off the bat, it’s such a kick ass song. The video for the song is also pretty fucking cool. How did you guys pull that off?
George Chase, Jr.:
First off, thank you! So all that footage was shot pre-pandemic. At every point, we wanted there to be a little animation, but there was some other footage that we wanted to shoot with the band and with public places. But then the pandemic hit and the world shut down. So we decided to switch gears and just lean hardcore into animation. At first I just said, “Screw it, we got some down time, I’ll do the animation myself.” I had no idea how hard that stuff was (laughing). I messed with that for two days and then I was like – Nope! We’re finding somebody else who can do this. I’m really, really proud of where that thing landed. And it’s a heck of a first foot forward.
DBM:
Well it is amazing. Seriously. The video matched it so well.
George Chase, Jr.:
The other funny part is sometimes people will say, “Oh, that’s such a great song!” I’m like – I know! And they’ll say, “Well that’s kind of arrogant!” Well, sorry, you’re right. It is kind of arrogant. But I say it because I was a fan of that song first, before it was a Sublets song. So to me, it almost feels like we’re playing a cover because it’s not my song. It’s Britton’s song. But man, I was a fan of it first. I love it. I think the song absolutely rips. And it is my favorite song to play live. It’s just so great.
DBM:
Your newest single was just released recently, “Finally Free”. Can you give us a bit of history behind that one?
George Chase, Jr.:
It’s that one song that I kept coming back to. When I was really looking at what we were going to do, what our sound was going to be, that was the song that was my moral or my musical compass. I wrote that song when I was like 17. And it’s actually really funny, because we have live performances of my old band playing that song. And it’s basically unchanged. Some of the lyrics have changed slightly. And tweaked it a bit, like it used to kind of have a very bouncy feeling, and we straightened that out and made it more driving. But the root of the song is all unchanged.
DBM:
Speaking of that, when you go back, and certainly this is a song that you said, is 20 plus years old, I know a lot of music gets written from personal experiences. So when you go back and you revisit something that you’ve written from that long ago, does that trigger any emotions for you when you revisit that? And if so, how do you treat that song the second time around?
George Chase, Jr.:
Some songs absolutely bring up emotional baggage, other ones don’t. This is one of those that absolutely brings up some changes of feelings. This song specifically was written about three different relationships, or failed relationships, or want-to-be relationships that I thought might be love. But the other person didn’t reciprocate. So, it must not be love. Looking at it now, I’m married to my best friend…I’m not that heartbroken teen anymore. I mean, I still remember what that feels like. I’ll still sometimes go back, especially for an exercise like this, and try to get myself back in that headspace and be like – Okay, so what was I saying then? Is there a better way to say it now?
And sometimes I just also need to step back and be like, “Nope, it is what it is. This is it.” It was a moment in time. I could keep beating up and rewriting the song, but at some point you just need to let it go and move on. And there are other songs that I just don’t even listen to anymore or play anymore. Because either A) It’s a really different or just a bad song, or B) It was written out of a place of ignorance and misplaced anger. Or unfair to person I wrote it about…there’s more than one song I wish I wouldn’t have put out into the world.
Ultimately, I’m not that angry teen anymore. It’s okay to make mistakes, learn, and grow. Take ownership of my feelings and move forward. But I’m still sorry to those I unfairly hurt along the way.
DBM:
I’m pretty sure we’ve all been in that boat at some point. You know, one of my favorite lines that really stuck out to me from “Finally Free” is, “I’m amazed how time has flown. And out of all those I have known, again, my mind wanders to how I’m still in love with you.” And I think that everybody has had that at some point in their lives. Whether it was a grade school crush, a high school crush, college…You can still look back on that fondly. You may be with somebody else, but you still have genuine feelings for them.
George Chase, Jr.:
Yes. And you know the hard thing is…I often say I love deeper today than I did yesterday. The older I get, the more that I experience, the more that I can feel love, and just the deeper and harder I can feel. But it still doesn’t mean that as a high schooler that when I thought that I loved someone, I loved that person as much as I could love at that point. And it’s still very hard to deal with rejection, it is something that I think is kind of universal. But I think it’s also good for us as people and humans to experience what it’s like to pine over somebody. I think it also just kind of makes it worth it in the end, when you do find that someone. And for me, personally, it made me realize that love isn’t this magical thing where all of a sudden two people fall in love with each other and live happily ever after. No. Love is more than an emotion. It’s a flippin’ choice every single day to be with this person. My high school definition of love is very different than what my present day definition of love is. And I think that’s also reflected in songs. But now it’s kind of interesting when I looked back and thought that I knew it all. And I knew nothing.
DBM:
Yeah, I think they call that something like…maturing (laughing)
George Chase, Jr.:
Yeah, yeah. Something I swore I would never do (laughing)
DBM:
What would you say is the best advice that someone ever gave to you?
George Chase, Jr.:
Well, there are two things that come to mind. One was something I needed to hear but wasn’t necessarily the best piece of advice. And one was the absolute best piece of advice, but I was kind of already doing it. I don’t know that I would necessarily say that I needed it.
So the piece I needed – I was recording with a guy, it was our first time in a “studio.” It was in a guy’s basement and there were certain things that I was embarrassed about. Just things like – Oh, I don’t want my voice to sound too much like (Green Day) Billie Joe. I don’t want to seem like I’m too nerdy when I’m singing this. Or I want to be a better guitarist. Just all these insecurities of our sound, and showing up to these punk fests. And there’s all these kids who were real punks, you know? And in my mind, there are these real punks, and I’m just a suburban kid who comes from an upper-middle-class white family, and what do I know about punk. And he basically said, “You can’t change who you are or what your history is. So people might judge you. But that’s part of life, so deal with it. This is your story. These are your influences. Don’t run from them. This is who you are.” And I don’t know why. But at that time, that was just the most needed thing. It just resonated with me so much. And I needed to hear that.
Then the “best” piece of advice was from one of my really dear, good friends. She’s been in theater, she’s a musician, she and I have performed together bunches of times as a duet and other stuff…her advice was to just work. When all else fails, work. When you’re lost and you don’t know what direction to go, work. What does that mean? That means write. That means doing something every day to get better. Rehearse, write, pick up your guitar and play a scale, play a scale on the piano. Just work. Sometimes you get so bogged down and focused on wanting to put out something that’s perfect…but, it doesn’t matter, just work everyday.
I am a true believer in quantity over quality. That’s not to say that you don’t like spending time on songs that deserved to have the time spent on them, but write a hundred songs and take the best five or ten or twenty songs, and then spend your time on those. Go out and play all the gigs you can find, you will learn so much about yourself. Play with musicians who are better than you and push you. You’ll swallow your pride when you realize you’re not that great, or when you have to lug your own gear through the rain. Play a show where you’re just getting heckled pretty much the entire time. And see how that feels and how you respond to that. Or a show where no one is listening to you at all. Play a lot. Learn how your throat responds to your voice being used excessively, or how your fingers respond to playing guitar for three hours, multiple nights in a row. Just get out there and work, put in the time, and get the experience.
DBM:
What can you tell me about your upcoming online segment, Happy Hour Sessions?
George Chase, Jr.:
It’s something that honestly started off as a therapy session for myself with some friends to write music, have a drink, or maybe have several drinks (laughing), and ultimately perform the song we just wrote. But it has kind of grown into this really amazing experience where I get to know another musician and get to know the way that they write and hear. Get inside their head, get to know them on a much more personal level than just a regular interview or whatever you’re hearing from them. Asking questions like, how do you write? Why did you choose that chord? Why do you write that way? What are your influences? Talk to me about the instrument you’re playing right now. How did you first learn that? You start knowing their story. All while writing a song together. And when you write a song in three hours, first of all, it kinda frees you up because time is the enemy. So the guest and I are now teammates against the clock to write this song. And you can redefine what you think a song is. It doesn’t have to be a three-minute thing. It could be a minute, it could be five minutes, maybe there’s no chorus, no lyrics, maybe you write a song that sucks. This frees you up to get out of your comfort zone, to potentially write a bad song. But we’re still going to go through the process and the work and talking about the lyrics, talking about the melody, talking about the structure. Some of the songs are piano pieces. One of them used a loop pedal and he did beatboxing and stuff, I played bass over it and then he sang. And I’ll tell you what, man…I’ve done like a dozen episodes now, and I am so proud of every single song we’ve done. I am damn proud of what the series has become and am super excited to see where it goes.
DBM:
All right – last question here…what is the one message that you want to leave for your fans and people who are getting introduced to your music?
George Chase, Jr.:
Hmmm…I’m trying to get it down to just one thing, but I guess it all has to do with happiness basically. I think I’ve got to answer it in two different ways. The first is that happiness is a choice every single day. I firmly believe that you should choose to enjoy the struggle and the work, you know? I had a friend who was going through a horrific breakup and she was sobbing, and she asked me, “What do I do?”
I responded, “Enjoy it.”
And she thought I was the most fucked up individual…and I was like – no, no, I’m serious, you might never feel heartbreak again. Enjoy the human experience. Enjoy this moment. Enjoy the fact that you feel so gutted right now, and that you can feel this deep, and let yourself feel. You can choose to enjoy the ride. You can choose to enjoy it, all the emotions, all the feelings. And it doesn’t mean that you love heartbreak, but it means that you love experience.
And then the other part of that happiness is being true to yourself, and making your expectations truly matter. I firmly believe that success to me is basically just putting one foot in front of the other every day. It goes back to that idea of work. If I did something to make myself better today, that’s successful. And at the end of my life, I know that by putting together the small pieces, the big picture will come into focus. If I die putting in the work every day, and if I die being as good of a husband and father as I can be, then I’m successful.
So yeah, so that’s like a long, long-winded answer, but just choose happiness. Choose happiness and set those expectations that are right for you. There is no simple “happily ever after.” Happiness is what you make of it.
DBM:
Definitely, words to live by.
Mr. Chase, it has been an honor and a privilege, thank you for all of your time.
