I LOVE sports. As a girl I not only loved football, baseball, basketball, nascar and golf, I planned everything around watching each of them. Chicago sports are my sweet spot. Cubs, Bulls and Bears. My loves. I spent my weekdays in the summer rushing home from the pool to see Ryne, Jodie, Ron, Rick, Mark and Leon and to catch Harry announcing and then singing in the seventh inning stretch before walking back to the pool again. I spent years watching MJ, Scottie, Horace, BJ, John and Phil dominate. I laid around watching Jack, Arnie, Payne and later Phil. Sunday afternoons were my favorite as I planned for and anticipated with great enthusiasm Walter, Jim, Mike, Mike D, Willie, and the crew. These teams, this camaraderie, I celebrated each season. I felt a part of it and I trusted it.
My favorite all time play was one that Walter and Jim successfully carried out against the Vikings. Third down and 14 yards to go, all eyes on Jim. Walter was in the backfield. Jim dropped back, Walter stepped up grabbed the ball, Jim ran. Walter threw a spiral that translated into a touchdown to Jim in the end zone. MONEY. No one was expecting that play (I like to say that I was). Walter, although he had a phenomenal arm, was not the quarterback. Jim handed him the ball and trusted that Walter would get it there. Likewise, Walter believed that Jim would catch it! They called an audible….everyone thought that they were going one way and then, at the line scrimmage, the center of where the play begins, they spontaneously changed it.
Over the last 6 weeks during this COVID-19 Quarantine I keep thinking about that play. (I’m seriously missing sports). That was a bold move, not one that most would have called. Not one that should have worked. It did! Not all bold moves work that successfully, and most have consequences. That one, thankfully for me, the fan, was a huge score! As I sit watching the moves of our government officials, obediently following them over the last few weeks, I replay that special play in my mind. I’m not all knowing and therefore I have no idea if the actions of any one single person, state, and/or our government are correct. I’m not an authority on what anyone should believe right now, but I think that you could relate it to my favorite play. I know why that play worked, why that team succeeded, and why in many ways we are not right at this moment in time. TRUST and RESPECT.
These two virtues are lacking in countries, in local society, in cultures, and within the family nucleus. Over the last several years I have watched as we as a society forget how to speak to one another. The breakdown is like watching an offense fall apart in a playoff game. All you can do is cringe at the debacle you see before you. Your hope and anticipation for the week just melted away. Lost on us is how to respect opposing views. We forget basic manners, courtesy and kindnesses. We hide behind computer screens and scream out from a veil of darkness pretending like our opinions NEED to be heard all while failing to even care about the calamity of them. This goes above and beyond your opinions, views, morals, religions, races, creeds and everything in between.
This is called humanity, or the absolute disregard of it. It’s ok to be different. It’s ok to notice the differences. It’s not ok, in my opinion, to exploit the differences from such a place of disdain that one is trying to divide and destroy. People who claim to want to love everyone make exceptions and only do so if those they are pandering to believe what they are ‘selling’. I watch as people stand on a soapbox of peace yet are inciting quiet violence by calling out differing ideas as wrong, and different people as evil, if they don’t prescribe to their exact thoughts. Evil may live within this world, but it does NOT have to live within you. You alone are responsible for what you allow in, and what you breathe out of your heart and mind. Debate is good. Vitriol is toxic. Ideas are life giving. Judgment is suffocating. Opinions are most generally not conclusive and certainly not comprehensive, while facts are based on TRUTH and TRUST. Love, whether it be the act of BEING love and/or SHOWING love, is not an opinion. It does not wane based on differing beliefs. It bridges the gap. Love is concrete. Love, TRUE LOVE, the kind that this world needs more of, is an act about the WELL BEING of SOMEONE ELSE, not YOURSELF and your opinions.
Do you know who the real leader of that 1985 Chicago Bears team was? Was it Ditka? It really wasn’t just the superstar Walter Payton (although he is my all time favorite), nor was it just the quarterback Jim McMahon, or my guy Samurai Mike. It was all of them. Differing styles, differing large personalities, differing positions all coming together as one unit. That team was made up of great players that focused less on individual accolades and more on invigorating, developing, succeeding and shining together as a whole. They won because they were one.
Image from TSM interactive
When I look at the world today I see a place that I’m recognizing less and less, which is rich considering I’ve been in the same place for six weeks, and I’m scared of more and more. Social distancing didn’t need to occur for us to be divided, we’ve already allowed that to occur. I am watching individuals annihilate every ounce of human decency to propagate their own agenda. This is so much more than a pandemic destroying lives, or politicians on all sides with a lack of leadership. It’s hosted in narrow minded, self-serving individuals that have forgotten how to TRULY love their fellow man. That doesn’t begin in Washington, or the State Capital, that begins in YOUR own heart. The real virus didn’t start in Wuhan, China, it grew from the lack of respect and honor that continues to replicate within our own fiber against each other. A vaccine can’t cure the bad plays that we as individuals are responsible for, only a true audible on the discourse we allow to infiltrate our heart and minds and breathe back into others can do that.