Mike Rowe Tells Tyrus How Poetry Played A Part In His Journey To ‘Dirty Jobs’

Tyrus is joined by Dirty Jobs host Mike Rowe on the next episode of Maintaining with Tyrus. The two talk about all kinds of topics and their full conversation will be released on Sunday, but one of the things they touched on was the idea of being open to unexpected detours in your life.

The multi-hyphenate Tyrus talked about how at an earlier point in his life, he was laser-focused on one thing: getting to the NFL. However, he said that prevented him from being more open to pursuing other opportunities as they appeared.

"I wanted to open the NFL door, that's the only door that I was concerned with," he explained. "I didn't see a wrestling door, a bodyguard door, a TV door, a father door; I just saw that one door."

Tyrus explained that this kept him from being willing to try other things when the opportunities presented. He also mentioned how it can be difficult to accept that the original road was effectively coming to an end.

"Was that difficult for you when you were like, ‘I want to do this; I want to do so many things,’ and when something didn't work out how did you handle that?" Tyrus asked Rowe. 

You could take a thousand guesses as to how Rowe would answer that question and I bet you'd still never guess that he started talking about poetry.

"Well, I grew up — I was a sucker for poetry, actually," Rowe said. "I was really into it."

He wasn't talking about dirty limericks either.

"You're talking about roads, there's a great poem by Robert Frost, ‘The Road Not Taken,’" Rowe said. "That was one of the first things my pop made me memorize, and I still think about the last stanzas: And both that morning equally lay/In leaves no step had trodden black/Oh, I kept the first for another day!/Yet knowing how way leads on to way/I doubted if I should ever go back."

"So, no regrets," Tyrus said.

"Well, as long as you're curious about where the road is going," Rowe said. "You shouldn't be frightened of the detours."

Be sure to check out the full conversation on the upcoming episode of Maintaining With Tyrus when it's released on Sunday, March 3.