If Not This, Then What?

I watched a documentary about Todd Marinovich tonight.  It was one of those 30 for 30 ESPN films – if you’re not familiar with that series you owe it to yourself to check them out.  Most are not sports stories even though they are about sports.  They’re about people.  They often expose the ugly truth that dedicated sports fans don’t want to hear: athletes are just human beings and they are as flawed and bizarre as anybody else in this world. 

The Marinovich story was one I had heard but had forgotten about.  The quick and dirty, and all that I really knew was this; gifted athlete with an obsessive father, who flamed out in the NFL presumably due to his drug use.  There was much more to that story.  I remember watching this kid play – once in person at a USC game when I lived in CA before he was arrested the first time – he was an incredible, gifted athlete.   What I didn’t know is that after he faltered as a pro quarterback he took a position on an Arena Football League team.  Not because he wanted to get back in the game but because he needed money to feed his heroin addiction.  A fascinating footnote; because of the way that his father had “trained” him since literally the crib and his ability to fight through pain – he once threw (10) TDs in an AFL game…he was dope-sick at the time.

Sounds like a sad story, no?  It is but it’s not.  At its end, even at its core it’s a story of redemption really and that’s a story we all want to hear, I think.  I do at least.  I grow tired of nightly news calamities.  They only give me the tragic end of the sentence, the bloody exclamation point.  I want the unorganized paragraphs and broken punctuation preceding.  I’m a narrative guy.  I hate that we have become a sound bite society.  I’m more History Channel than Headline News.  Our collective attention span is shorter now than it has ever been and it grows more so every day.  One of my greatest fears is that we have lost the ability to go past the headline.  I perceive Americans as reacting to the “nugget” – not the news.  If that’s true, this country is in worse shape than even I perceive it to be.  For the record, Fox News is the most destructive organization as it relates to the integrity of the American intellectual and inquisitive spirit. But as per the norm, I digress.

I haven’t told, nor have I tried to tell Todd’s story (watch the film).  The only reason I’m writing now is something that he said that blew my mind, “If you’re good at something, does that mean you were meant to do it?”

Let that sink in. 

I’m good at what I do.  Shit, I’m a genius even (arrogant sarcasm) but is this what I was “meant” to do?  I think it is, but who’s to say?  There are certainly other interests I’d like to pursue but few if any of them would pay the mortgage. There are few things that I find more fulfilling than writing these words now and then – that doesn’t make me a writer. Twenty years ago, I imagined myself to be on a reunion tour as a founding member of a has-been heavy metal band right now.  Clearly, that’s not the case – and that doesn’t make me a rock star.  More often than not I throw my feelings down in paint on a canvas - that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm an artist.  Am I "meant" to do any of these? 

What would I do if I were not an architect?  I’ve never asked myself that question before.  Partly because, getting here was the hard part, and that was my whole focus – I never thought about what I would do once I got here.  Truth is I’m still not “here”.  After watching this doc tonight, I could not help but ask myself a hard question: “If not this, then what?”  And if not this, why have I sacrificed so much to get to “this”?

I hiked up Stone Mountain this morning and sat down on top of that big old rock.  As far as my eyes could see, I saw nothing but pristine blue sky.  I wondered aloud what that actually means – just how far can the eye see?  When I got back to the house I asked the “cloud”.  I got a lot of interesting answers - 250 million light years, 24 miles, 16 miles because of the curvature of the earth (it depends on where you are apparently).  One fellow from Albuquerque responded with (18) inches.  WTF?

His explanation was that the farthest a man can see is from his head to his heart. It’s not only the farthest distance but the most difficult to traverse.  Wow.  I like to think that my thoughts are profound but the profundity of that assessment made me question my own questions.

Maybe that’s the point though.  If I didn’t question who and what I am on the daily, I wouldn’t be who I am and what I am, on the daily.

It’s okay to ask yourself “If not this, then what?”  But you have to be willing to honestly accept the answer that you give yourself.  And if “this” isn’t “what” you'd thought it would be, you’d better have the balls to change it.  If you can’t act upon your own reality, then you have no business in this conversation – you’re the 250 million light years away guy.

I can see the (18) inches, but I haven’t found a way to get the whole team there just yet.