Sport–The Beautiful Nothing
I’m begging you to read this article, if you haven’t already. There’s so much to say about the situation, but I don’t feel like I have the ability to say it. Yet here I am, making an attempt.
No one likes to think of death. I used to think it was because it reminds us of our own mortality; but I’m not sure that’s true. As I’ve watched family members recently struggle to say goodbye to a beloved relative, I realized that I don’t, as of yet, fear my own death–I fear the mortality of my loved ones. The situation presented in the Times-Picayune article is impossible to avoid personalizing, no matter how hard I try. This blog is not, however, intended to be a journal, so I’ll try to keep the journalizing (that’s actually a word!) to a minimum.
This kind of story reminds us of how unimportant sports are. We all need to remember that. Sport is sport. Sport is fun. It should never be anything more or anything less. It needs to be secondary to just about everything else in life.
But this kind of story, or, more specifically, Brian, also reminds us that sports–because of their unimportance–are so very important. We need distraction. I need distraction. Brian needed distraction. As EDSBS (PG-13) so eloquently said, “If most people were to pay attention (just) to the really, really important things in life, they’d spear their eyeballs out with cocktail forks and go stand over there in the tryout line for Equus” (parenthesis added). The couple of hours I periodically use to watch a Blazer game or play pickup ball are different exactly to avoid such a fate. I literally have nothing invested in the distractions, and my life won’t change one bit, regardless of the outcome.
Anyone want to argue that Brian didn’t need distraction?
In his final weeks, Brian told his family that he knew he was going to heaven and that he wanted to meet Jesus wearing his Chris Paul jersey.
Chris Paul was his escape. His last wish was to go to a Hornets game probably because the rest of his life was filled with so much dang importance. For the couple of hours he would be at the game, he wouldn’t have to have cancer or worry about his grieving parents. He could just be a basketball fan; one of the crowd; a kid.
On the other side, anyone want to argue that athletes don’t need reality? Read about the shoes.
What can something so insignificant as a word written on a shoe really mean? “Brian” is now a link between Paul and reality. As he goes out to take a starring role in something so unimportant as a basketball game, he will more easily remember that what he’s doing–and doing so beautifully–is nothing more than distraction.
But for Brian, the distraction that is Chris Paul was as important as anything else.