How a Racist Encounter in Public Inspired Me to Become the Best
By: Adi D. Goyal
Tags: Short Story, Motivation, Positive Thinking, Personal Development, Growth

About two feet from my face, a guy was yelling at me and my friend.

His flushed, not-so-welcome face was contorted with rage as he spat insult after insult. He jabbed his fingers just a few inches from our noses, his mouth spewing poison that spread throughout the whole train. Every skin cell on my body wanted to teleport and leave. But all I could do was sit still. I simply sat very, very still.

Well, f*ck. I tried not to blink.

All I could do was put on my best poker face for situations like these and think, This is a nice spot to be in.

So…here I was. Having the picnic of my life. Getting lectured by a guy who was using the n-word in every one of his sentences. How exactly did this all start?

About an hour earlier, my friend and I boarded the train and took our seats. As the train began to move, a tall, built man came into our compartment and took a seat diagonal from us. He had flattened hair that just reached his brooding eyes. His jawline was sharply defined, as if chiseled from a canyon rock. He carried a large skateboard in his hand, and had a black bag slung across his back.

He struck a conversation with the group behind him. The moment I heard him speak, I felt uncomfortable. Something just put me on an edge. Every feature about him screamed, danger! Maybe it was his laughter. It sounded like a dolphin dying (or like rusted metal being slowly scraped against each other — take your pick). I cringed at his jokes. He seemed a little too free with his words and his volume.

A person nearby rose and left to a different compartment. I looked after them and thought, Maybe I should move, too. I don’t know why, but I felt like something nasty would happen around this dude. But what if something cool happens? Then I’d miss it, I told myself. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?

The man then pulled out a plastic polythene from his bag. He cupped the polythene between his hands, above his lap. It looked like he had a bottle in there. He raised the bag and brought it to his lips, drinking from the bottle.

Must be his water bottle, I thought. But then I wondered why he’d put the bottle in a polythene. I furrowed my brows — he didn’t bring what I think he did, did he? That would be interesting. Did he bring —

“Tequila?”

The man looked at the guy across from him. He was a heavy-set, bald guy in his forties. His frame looked haggard, but his eyes shone with delight.

“What was that?” asked the skateboard-man, sounding wary.

“Tequila,” said the bald man. He pointed at the polythene.

“How did you know?

The bald man grinned. “I know. I know the smell.” He looked amused. “Give me some.”

For a second, the skateboard man looked taken aback. Then he raised his eyebrows and offered the bottle. His new buddy accepted the bag gingerly and took a swig of the drink.

Within ten minutes of back-and-forth sharing, both guys were depressingly drunk. They sounded like school-children ranting a rap song underwater. They laughed with each other and acted as though they were best friends. A few more people stood and left the compartment. My friend and I looked at the two men uneasily. Every atom of my body wanted to get the hell out. But what if something cool happens? Then I’d miss it, I told myself. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen?

We were literally just two stops away. Nothing wrong should happen in that much time, I thought.

And that’s when everything went wrong.

The two men then took notice of my friend. They whispered to each other and nodded at his clothes, muttering not very conspicuously. I guess they didn’t relate to his wardrobe style.

My friend, one to be proud, took offense and called them off with an angry outburst.

“Can you not stare?”

The two guys said nothing, but continued to stare at him.

“I said, could you not stare?” My friend leaned forward. “It’s rude. It’s rude to stare at people.”

The bald guy pretended to be surprised and defended himself.

“Calm down, ni**a.” He raised his arms. “I’m not saying anything about you.”

At which my friend lost his cool. His eyes sparked with electricity. “Don’t call me a ni**ga!” The bald guy opened his mouth, as if to retort, but my friend slammed him down. “Don’t! I am not your ni**ga! You can call yourself that, but not me! I’m a — ”

He was serious when it came to the topic of morality, my friend was. He proceeded to rant at the two men with a lecture on respect, boundaries, and independence. As he spoke, I looked at him in amazement and thought, Damn. This guy can talk.

“Neither of you knows how to respect,” my friend told them. “Neither you…” He pointed at the bald guy.

And then he dropped the other shoe. “Nor your damn partner.”

The skateboard guy froze. His jaw clenched. I looked at him with a mixture of fear and apprehension.

Oh, shit. I thought. We’re done.

Slowly, very slowly, the man shook his head and looked at me, his eyes narrowed. He scoffed. Skateboard in hand, he stood and walked over to us. The compartment became very quiet.

Now I was going to regret my decision to not move. Shit. Shit. Shit. The storm was coming.

“Wait, wait, wait.” He stopped a few feet from us. “I don’t need ni**gers like you telling me what to do! I can do what I want — it’s a free country, ni**a! I don’t care for your trash! People like you think so highly of themselves — ”

It kinda felt like watching a horror movie in 3D. My heart beat at my chest from beneath, like it wanted nothing more than the freedom to leap out and run. But I didn’t move.

My friend and I sat frozen as we listened to the reckless rage pouring from this dude. It was like he was incapable of forming a sentence without including the n-word at least once.

“Well, you’re shit! You and your people!”

Eons passed. This guy was still in front of us, hurling scathing remark after remark. He looked angry. Like…really angry. Like, I’m-going-to-bash-your-head-in-with-my-skateboard angry. I wondered whether I’d be going home with a cracked skull that night.

I thought about what if me and my friend tried taking the guy down. Or if we even tried reasoning with him. But then I saw the heavy skateboard, which belonged in the muscled arms of a furious drunk, and my confidence melted.

His friend (the other drunk) tried calming him down, but that only seemed to fuel his anger. My friend brought his phone out. He began recording the man, who laughed and started directing his abuses at the phone. When will it end? I wondered. When’s he going to stop?

This had been my first time witnessing such blatant racism in public. Other people on the train looked at us from above. They laughed nervously. Shit, their faces said. I’m glad I’m not sitting there.

Then they just recorded us getting yelled at. Very helpful.

I used to think this sort of stuff only happened to people who fell on the news videos on my Facebook feed. I wondered whether I’d be on the news. I then wondered whether I’d find myself on my own Facebook feed. That’d be cool.

Soon, a couple people on the train decided they’d had enough video content to keep their gossip circle entertained for days. They came over to stand by our side and boot the guy out of the compartment (about time).

“You better get your ass out soon if you want to get home alive,” one of them barked at skateboard-guy.

The man left, but not before blowing a kiss at my friend’s phone. “You tell your people what I think of them,” he said.

Eventually, a stop arrived. Half the train passengers kicked the abusive drunk off the train. This was also my friend’s stop, and he left.

Oh, thank goodness. I sighed with relief. For a few minutes, there was blissful peace. I sat there, contemplating the silence. But then I heard angry voices — Mr. Skateboard was having a fight with the conductor.

Son of a — okay, f*ck this. You know what — ? I moved to a different compartment. Finally. Here, there was true silence.

I then opened a pack of Goldfish from my backpack and munched my nerves away.

Ahh…perfect. I took the rest of the ride as a chance to think.

There were two things I learned from this encounter right away: 1) never sit near a drunk you don’t know, and 2) never leave the house without a goddamned taser.

The other things I learned came after thinking of this scene in the weeks that followed.

All I could think about was one thing: the man’s voice. Not so much the words he said, but the way he made us feel when he said them.

His voice carried so much weight. It was a voice full of power. It projected so much emotion, but it was all negative emotion.

There were times I wished that I had that kind of ability with my speech. I’m not someone who likes yelling or raising their voice. But after that incident, I thought to myself — man, I want a voice like that. Maybe even more powerful. I’ll train myself.

Throughout my life, this is how I coped with negative incidents. It’s how I dealt with people who I may have lived in fear of. Who scared me, who hurt me. At least it gave me wood to take negative instances in a positive light. By motivating me to be better.

I used to compare myself with people who I didn’t like. It landed me some places. If that prick got a half-scholarship, I bet I can get a full scholarship. If this asshat got into the 98th percentile in the nation for the PSAT, I bet I can get into to the 99th percentile.

The mindset pushed me to be better — but when I fell short and didn’t surpass the people I disliked, it’d crush my self-esteem into fine sugar-powder.

The question then became — why did I want to be better? To beat them up later? To patch my insecurities? To toughen myself up so I could face their brunts next time?

It’s pretty simple. Little Tommy gets pushed around by the playground bully. So he learns karate from his next-door neighbor and decides to kick the bully in the nuts someday.

Maybe he does learn karate well enough to break the bully’s balls. That’s great. I’d love to see that, honestly. But what if he focuses instead on helping out the other kids who get stepped on by the bully. Instead of forcing five-year olds to eat sand, he protects them. He teaches them to defend themselves. You see what I’m saying?

I’d love that even more. I know the other kids would. And I know little Tommy would, too.

Using this mindset, I’ve come a long way. I’ve become a better public speaker, a researcher, a friend, and a leader. I’ve also started my own organization where part of my goal is to help STEM students be better speakers and leaders in a world where they’re not being trained to be that.

Now going back to the guy on the train. What if someone could use power like that for good purposes? With a voice like that, you could fill people with strength and hope. You can make them feel proud of who they are. The one thing that went through my mind that day was — I’m going to be a passionate, powerful speaker someday. And when I do, I’ll never abuse that power the way he did. Maybe not like Tony Robbins, but I’d have my own style.

That was (hopefully) a one-time incident. But what about somebody who has to deal with people like this every day?

I’m not here to teach you how to lower your fear, or your disgust, or your anger. I want to talk about how to take those emotions and convert them into something powerful. Into something useful.

It’s smarter to compare yourself to other people who may possess talent, resources, or abilities that you would like to have one day, but who you don’t aspire to emulate. Think about what you would do differently if you had their power. See how you can do good where they didn’t.

Beat your rivals at the game of giving good. Help others, don’t hurt.

In more recent years, I’d compare myself to people who shitted on me or others I liked, and I’d think to myself — someday I’ll be better — and do better — than you.

There were times when I saw people get pushed down because of their fat frame, their lack of social skills, and their way of thinking. Sometimes, I’d get caught in the gunfire, too, and it made me feel like a piece of crap.

The guys doing the pushing would be at the top of the line. Someday, I would think, I’ll figure out what makes you so confident, so smooth, so smart, so athletic, so good with people — but then I won’t be a dick-head like you.

The idea isn’t to prove that you’re better than them. You don’t need to teach them a lesson. You don’t need to impress anybody.

The idea is this: power can be earned by anybody. It’s up to you to use it as a force of good once it’s earned.

Take your shock, or your anger, or your fear, or your disgust, and channel it into something healthy. You make a negative scenario into an inspiration to grow. You can make positive change.

I imagined what would happen if my drunk well-wisher on the train used his voice as a wildlife conservationist. Chances are he’d be able to raise an army of die-hard, lion-loving fighters ready to wipe out any and all poachers off the face of the planet.

Believing that you’ll eventually have the strength to overcome such negative experiences in the future can keep your engines running.

You can be useful. You can be somebody who creates change for the better, rather than be somebody who stands and watches.

In some parts of today’s world, it’s pretty common knowledge that the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Some people have enough money to buy luxury ice-cubes that cost over $300 and have secretaries who have secretaries of their own. And then you have others who need to sell their kidney if they want to start their own small business.

In many cases, broke people want to start their own businesses but don’t have the money to scale. Sometimes, they don’t even need that much money to get started. So why don’t their banks give them the tiny loans they need to lift off?

Banks are afraid they won’t pay it back. If we gave out small loans, then every villager would ask us for money. And who knows how many of them will give us back our coin?

Which is why when banks did give them loans, they also charged super-high interest rates. But that ended up defeating the whole point of taking the loan in the first place, since the loaners ended up with a fraction of the money they needed.

What the hell? I still can’t believe people actually thought this was a good idea. But anyways, how was anyone going to escape poverty?

In the mid-70s, a Bangladeshi economics professor named Muhammad Yunus went to a village after a recent famine had hit his country hard. He noticed that the people there struggled to pull themselves out of their nation’s shithole.

Why? Because at the end of the day, they barely got any money from their local banks to start their own businesses, whether it was for clothing, mat-weaving, or equipment.

So Muhammad tried something. He gave 42 women $27 each of his own money — not a whole lot, since he wanted to experiment — and tested to see whether they’d make anything good. Or even pay him back.

His idea turned out to be a blast. Now, the women could make and sell their own baskets. Not only did the women get empowered to start their own successful businesses, but they also payed him back — contrary to the beliefs of the common banks there. And so the microfinance movement — giving small loans to poor people who can’t afford to take on large loans — was started.

Muhammad knew he didn’t have the power to make this idea large-scale — not yet, at least. But he made it his aim to be stronger and bigger. To be official and as omnipresent as the present-day banks.

Why? Even though he wasn’t a poor villager himself, he felt for the people of his country. He felt their plight. He felt disgust with the unfairness of the flawed system. He was also inspired by his mom, who was known for not turning her back on those who needed help. And so he sought to be better at creating a system of money and entrepreneurship than the current system.

But what if that was all luck, eh? What if the 42 women he helped out just happened to be brutally honest and responsible? Well, he tried his micro-financing system in different areas of Bangladesh, and even different developing areas of the world — from South America, Europe, Australia, and other parts of Asia. And his system was a success there, too.

He’s been pushed down — by people who dislike his practice, and even by officials from his own country. He was taken down as the head of his own bank by Bangladesh’s government. He’s been accused of embezzlement to tax fraud. Even the prime minister joins in on the banging.

But I guess Muhammad did something similar to what this article’s been talked about: converting negative feelings into a fuel to grow and do better than your enemies.

As of 2017, the Grameen Bank — Muhammad’s microfinance establishment — has had 9 million borrowers. And a 99.6% repayment rate! Dope. Many of the entrepreneurs who grew as a result of microfinancing happened to be women who wanted other work besides what they did at home — in fact, 97% of his borrowers were women. So not only did Muhammad use his growing power to confront a poverty issue, but he also helped out in a cultural issue.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

We face unfair circumstances our whole life. Some of you may know what I’m talking about — some of you may not.

The desire to help others out after feeling underhanded is a great motivational factor to do better. It’s also a practical way to cope with fresh wounds or scars from the past. It gives you a positive, hopeful, active mindset.

Don’t envy the people you dislike just because they’re better at something. YOU can be better at that something…and be better than them.

You can grow and reach new heights you never imagined. Who knows? Some of you might be the next crime-fighting hero, the next poverty-busting champion, the next helping-hand for those abused.

Or you don’t have to change the world.

Did you want me to be more inspiring? I guess I could. But most people aren’t up to the task. It’s a lot of work, honestly.

You can change your own future for the better. That’s a lot easier. Because even a small change to your mindset can make a massive change to your success.