... I think my mailbox is defective ...
July 12, 1999
4:12 a.m.
Okay, I'll admit it. I get off on succes.  I love it. It doesn't even have to be mine, you know? It's okay if it's mine. I don't mind succeeding at all. But I enjoy hearing about successful people. I enjoy watching people rise above whatever odds are thrown at them--anything from merely the internal voice that constantly tells them they're not going to be anybody to true barriers of progress that other people put in their way. I enjoy watching people who know they've just done something important. After Michael Jordan won his last NBA title, he spent ten minutes just walking around the floor looking at things. You could see him soaking up the moment. Just being there. It was a thrilling thing, a marvelous moment. Yesterday I saw a picture of Brandi Chastain on the front of our city's sports page. Brandi is a player on the U. S. women's soccer team, and they had just won the World Cup because of her penalty kick. The picture showed her on her knees, sitting up a little, every muscle clenched and her head thrown back in an expression of ecstasy. Sunlight doused her face. Sweat sparkled from her body. The grass was the color of green that it should always be. Her hands were closed and outstretched, one of them holding the white shirt she had worn, the other empty and wrapped into a fist. It is the perfect picture, capturing a person in the throes of her perfect moment, capturing the thing about success that makes it so beautiful. This is a woman who was cut from her team four years ago and missed being an Olympic champion because of it. She had missed a penalty kick earlier in the year to cost her team a game. And now, well. Success has a way of coming to people who don't quit. After seeing the photo, I went downstairs and set my coffee cup on the table before me. I put my head on my hands, and for a minute I let my eyes cloud up and my throat get big. I didn't really cry, okay. I mean, heck, I'm a guy after all. But still. There is something so terribly fragile in the message this picture sends. Something scary. I want my daughter to know about it. I want you to know it. I want to know it, too. And that's why this picture is so important. It's proof that we live in a world where people can be anything they want to be. I believe that with all of my heart. We can be what we want to be. We only have to want it bad enough to not care about the pain the process will bring. We only have to want it bad enough let it wash over us at special times. And we only have to want it bad enough to know beyond doubt when it comes true.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
|
"Momentary insanity ... I just lost my mind. I thought, my god, this is the greatest moment of my life on the soccer field." Brandi Chastain Member of the U.S. Women's soccer team after scoring the final goal in her team's World Cup victory. |
BACK TO 
|