Greenlights By Matthew McConaughey PDF Free Download

Greenlights Summary

Greenlights Book: I’ve been in this life for 50 years, been trying to work out its riddle for 42, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last 35. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.

Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know-how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges – how to get relative with the inevitable – you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching green lights.”

So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and scenes, felts and figured-outs cools and shameful. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caught, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.

Hopefully, it’s a medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.

It’s a love letter. To life.

It’s also a guide to catching more green lights – and to realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green, too.

Good luck.

About the Author

Matthew McConaughey is the son of twice-divorced, thrice-married Jim and Kay McConaughey, married, and the father of three children. A self-proclaimed fortunate man, he considers himself a storyteller by occupation, writes poetry, and is a frustrated musician (but hey, there’s still time).

He is an excellent companion on a road trip, believes it’s okay to have a beer on the way to the temple and is better with a day’s sweat on him. A very intentional man, Matthew feels at home in the world, likes to compare before contrasting, and is constantly seeking the common denominators in life.

A crooner, a talented whistler, a wrestler, a prescriptive etymologist, and a world traveler, he believes scars are the original tattoos and has naturally grown more hair at age fifty than he had at thirty-five.

He has won six water-drinking competitions worldwide, says his prayers before meals because it makes the food taste better, is a great nickname giver, studies gastronomy and architecture, loves cheeseburgers and dill pickles, has been learning to say “I’m sorry,” and enjoys a good cry once a week at church.

He doesn’t stop to watch his own movies if he crosses one on TV, he likes to pull things off just to see if he can, never goes to bed holding a grudge, and has recently learned there is more than one way to be right. He would rather be a sailor than an astronaut, has fluid legs on the dance floor, will take a belief over a conclusion, and believes that to all good men nontyrants, each to his own.

In 2009, Matthew and his wife, Camila, founded the j.k. livin Foundation after-school curriculum, which helps at-risk kids in over fifty-two Title 1 high schools across the nation make healthier mind, body, and spirit choices.

In 2019, as well as writing this book, McConaughey became a professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin, his alma mater, where he teaches the class he created, Script to Screen.

As well as being an owner of the MLS team Austin FC, he is also the Minister of Culture/M.O.C. for the University of Texas and the City of Austin, another role and title he created. He continues to be a brand ambassador to the Lincoln Motor Company and creative director for Wild Turkey bourbon, where he co-created his favorite bourbon on the planet, called Longbranch. Matthew prefers sunsets to sunrises.

Greenlights Introduction

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

I’ve been in this life for fifty years, trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. Thirty-five years of realizing, remembering, recognizing, gathering, and jotting down what has moved me or turned me on along the way. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to get what I want. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.

I never wrote things down to remember; I always wrote things down so I could forget. The idea of revisiting my life and musings was a daunting one; I wasn’t sure if I’d enjoy the company. Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries and have a look at the thirty-five years of writing about who I’ve been over the last fifty. And you know what? I enjoyed myself more than I thought I would. I laughed, I cried, I realized I had remembered more than I expected, and forgot less.

What did I find? I found stories I witnessed and experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, answers to questions I had, reminders of questions I still have, affirmations for certain doubts, beliefs about what matters, theories on relativity, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers.* I found consistent ways that I approached life that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still.

I found a reliable theme.

So, I packed up those journals and took a one-way ticket to solitary confinement in the desert, where I began writing what you hold now: an album, a record, a story of my life so far.

Things I witnessed, dreamed, chased, gave, and received.

Truth bombs that interrupted my space and time in ways I could not ignore.

Contracts I have made with myself, many of which I live up to, most of which I still pursue.

These are my sights and seens, felts and figured outs, cools, and shameful.

Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality.

Initiations, invitations, calibrations, and graduations.

Getting away withs, getting caught, and getting wets trying to dance between the raindrops.

Rites of passage.

All between or on the other sides of persistence and letting go, on the way to the science of satisfaction in this great experiment called life.

Hopefully, it’s a medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.

It’s a love letter.

To life.

How did I get here?

I’ve earned a few scars getting through this rodeo of humanity. I’ve been good at it, I’ve been not so good at it, and ultimately, I’ve found some pleasure in all of it, either way. Here are some facts about me to help set the table.

I am the youngest brother of three and the son of parents who were twice divorced and thrice-married, to each other.

We grew up saying “I love you” to each other. We meant it.

I got whipped until my butt bled for putting on a Cracker Jack tattoo when I was ten.

When I first threatened to run away from home, my parents packed my bags for me.

My dad wasn’t there the day I was born. He called my mom and said, “Only thing I have to say is if it’s a boy, don’t name him ‘Kelly.’”

The only thing I ever knew I wanted to be was a father.

I learned to swim when my mom threw me in the Llano River and I was either going to float off the rocky waterfall thirty yards downstream or make it to the bank. I made it to the bank.

I was always the first one to wear out the knees in my Toughskin jeans.

For two years I led the Under-12 soccer league in red cards, as a goalie.

When I kept whining about my lone pair of tennis shoes being old and out of fashion, my mom told me, “Keep griping and I’ll take you to meet the boy with no feet!!”

I was blackmailed into having sex for the first time when I was fifteen. I was certain I was going to hell for the premarital sex. Today, I am merely certain that I hope that’s not the case.

I was molested by a man when I was eighteen while knocked unconscious in the back of a van.

I’ve done peyote in Real de Catorce, Mexico, in a cage with a mountain lion.

I’ve had seventy-eight stitches sewn into my forehead, by a veterinarian.

I’ve had four concussions from falling out of four trees, three of them on a full moon.

I’ve bongoed naked until the cops arrested me.

I resisted arrest.

I applied to Duke, UT Austin, Southern Methodist, and Grambling for my college education. I got accepted to three out of the four.

I’ve never felt like a victim.

I have a lot of proof that the world is conspiring to make me happy.

I’ve always gotten away with more in life than in my dreams.

I’ve had many people give me poems that I did not know I wrote.

I’ve been naïve, evil, and a cynic. But I am most fearless in the belief of my and mankind’s benevolence and the common denominator of values among us.

I believe the truth is only offensive when we’re lying.

I was raised on existential outlaw logic, a carnation of malaprops, full of fictitious physics, because if it wasn’t true, it ought to be.

There was nothing fictitious about the love, though. The love was real. Bloody sometimes, but never in question.

I learned early on how to get relative: how to deal.

I learned resilience, consequences, responsibility, and how to work hard. I learned how to love, laugh, forgive, forget, play, and pray. I learned how to hustle, sell, charm, turn a tide, make a downfall my upfall, and spin a yarn. I learned how to navigate highs and lows, hugs and blows, assets and deficits, love songs and epithets. Especially when faced with the inevitable.

This is a story about getting relative to the inevitable.

This is a story about greenlights.

The arrival is inevitable: Death.

A unanimous end, a unified destination.

A noun without regard. Our eulogy. Written.

Lived.

The approach is relative: Life.

A singular procession, our personal journey.

A verb with regard. Our résumé. Write it.

Live it.

This is the first fifty years of my life, of my résumé so far on the way to my eulogy.

For More Biography Books

Product details:

Edition	International Edition
ISBN	1472290690, 978-1472290694
Posted on	October 20, 2020
Format	pdf
Page Count	320 pages
Author	Matthew McConaughey