In the special, Hart then describes his rock bottom: During his ninth day in the hospital, he needs to use the toilet, but can’t move. He presses a button and a male nurse arrives, physically picking Hart up to sit on the bedside loo. When Hart realizes that he needs this stranger to wipe, he sobs. He asks God why his legs and arms are numb, yet he still has feeling—elsewhere. “Why not numb that up, too? At the lowest point of my life, why let me feel José wiping my ass?”
Things would get better for Hart—with work, of course, which he’s good at. Through extensive rehab, Hart was walking within weeks. Trainer Ron Everline spent months with Hart helping to rebuild his physique from scratch, starting with four-pound dumbbells.
“The toughest thing was slowing his rush, getting him to throttle back,” says Everline. “We talked a lot about how other people have gotten through this, and he could get through this too—that he didn’t need to be a superhero.”
While some might see the accident as a message from upstairs to ease up on the high-horsepower heavy metal, Hart doubled down, upping his collection of vintage cars—and filming a show about it. “Honestly, I think I’m just built a little different,” he says. “I mean, they don’t call accidents accidents for no reason. They’re not called purposes.”
NO LIMITS
And in the end, what is Hart’s purpose? He says that it’s not, as some have posited, to become a billionaire. “Though there’s about to be one,” he says. “That number isn’t a goal, but it presents an opportunity to break a narrative. There aren’t many black men in that group.”
So Hart grinds on.
“There’s a reason behind the march. A reason behind the run. There’s a reason behind the reach, or the jump, y’know what I mean? It’s not until that’s complete that I’ll stop,” he says. “I come from North Philadelphia. I come from a place of financial illiteracy, of no college, of where you’re not supposed to make it. I just want the younger generation coming up in the same place to know that we aren’t necessarily just where we are from.”