The short answer: Your past doesn't disqualify you is the theme the excuse catalog states as a rule — 'my past disqualifies me' is an excuse with a kill attached — and the story proves with chapters: a kid selling in the streets at twelve, arrested a dozen times as a juvenile, grew into the man who built this system.
What the chapters show
Chapters two and three are the record he authorized in full: the streets at twelve and thirteen, the arrests, the anger, the mind he battled his whole life. He doesn't soften any of it, because the theme depends on the facts being bad. A light past would prove nothing.
I was selling drugs at twelve, thirteen. Arrested a dozen times as a juvenile. I was in the streets before I had any business being anywhere.
The doctrine it becomes
The past is carried two ways in this brand: as fact, in the story — and as an excuse, in the catalog, where it gets the standard kill. A past explains a man's starting line; it has never once scheduled his tomorrow. The scorecard doesn't ask where you started. It asks what got done today, and it asks everybody the same question.
Keep going
- Chapter two — Twelve Years Old — the record, unsoftened
- My past disqualifies me — the same facts, carried as an excuse
- A past you're not proud of — the situation page