Actor Matthew McConaughey has some advice for those who, to borrow his dad’s phrase, haven’t \u00ab\u00a0gotten their ‘lick’ yet. \u00a0\u00bb
McConaughey in his new movie, \u00ab\u00a0Gold,\u00a0\u00bb plays a geologist-cum-millionaire who he says reminds him of his own Texas oilman father.
\u00ab\u00a0My dad had some [of this character] in him \u2014 every day waking up, throwing his legs off the bed, going, ‘Today’s gonna be the day!’ \u2014 his line was, ‘I’m gonna hit a lick! Oh, if I could just hit a lick,'\u00a0\u00bb McConaughey told CNBC’s \u00a0\u00bb Closing Bell. \u00a0\u00bb
(A \u00ab\u00a0lick,\u00a0\u00bb he said, \u00ab\u00a0means make a really big sale. \u00ab\u00a0)
\u00ab\u00a0There’s millions of Americans out there like that,\u00a0\u00bb said McConaughey.
So what advice does the movie star and married father of three \u2014 the man who pulled off his own comeback dubbed the \u00ab\u00a0McConaissance\u00a0\u00bb to win an Oscar, whose just keep livin Foundation is now running a string of after-school youth programs \u2014 have for those who haven’t gotten their lick yet?
\u00ab\u00a0Well, there’s a bit of a fib that we like to believe in sometimes, where they say ‘Well, if you just do what you love!’ … We don’t always get to do what we love,\u00a0\u00bb McConaughey said. \u00ab\u00a0Can we figure out how to love what we do? \u00a0\u00bb
A similar saying has been attributed to the German literary giant Goethe:
\u00ab\u00a0Cease endlessly striving for what you want to do and learn to love what must be done. \u00a0\u00bb
\u00ab\u00a0There was a wise young kid who had that T-shirt on, on a Brazilian farm three hours away from electricity,\u00a0\u00bb McConaughey said.
\u00ab\u00a0So, if you can learn to like what you do. \u00a0\u00bb
It’s another way of saying to embrace or take responsibility for what you have to do in life. In fact, it leads right into the \u00ab\u00a0self-reliance\u00a0\u00bb that McConaughey also emphasized.
\u00ab\u00a0We’re talking about what the government can do for us … I don’t know. I’m not trying to make it political. I’m going back to self-preservation, and the only one that can change any of us is ourselves,\u00a0\u00bb he said.
\u00ab\u00a0Take some inventory in the mirror, daily,\u00a0\u00bb he said.
That brings up another work, of which McConaughey is a fan: Dale Wimbrow’s 1934 poem, \u00ab\u00a0The Guy in the Glass. \u00a0\u00bb
\u00ab\u00a0But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum \/ If you can’t look him straight in the eye. \u00a0\u00bb
\u00ab\u00a0I’m not talking taking sides,\u00a0\u00bb he said. \u00ab\u00a0We’ve all got to look in the mirror. We’ve all got work to do. \u00a0\u00bb
\u00ab\u00a0We gotta go to work. Let’s work. Everybody,\u00a0\u00bb said McConaughey.<\/p>\n

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