Fatal Flaws

Days after the whole world is plastered with the news of our most noble baseball stars enhancing himself in illegal ways, and weeks after one of the best swimmers ever to swim the earth is caught smoking pot in a college dorm room I started to think. I think about the Greeks

I think the Greeks understood a lot more than we give them credit for. These people understood just because you are in the lime light doesn’t absolve you from being human at all. In fact this is the point in many of their stories. Think about it, most of these heroes have one fatal flaw that always seems to come back and is the one thing that ruins them. It is almost a wise lesson hidden within the clever stories. The lesson I think is that no matter how far we think we have become, as a person, we are always going to be human, we will always have human feelings and we will all act in ways that are human. Heroes are what we make them, no one chooses for heroes to be the accurate picture a flawless human being.

Who are you to blame? Do you understand these fatal flaws? Look at these stories a little closer please. Alex Rodriguez took a substance that was going to make him bigger, faster and stronger. You know why he took this? This was a man who had such high expectations to live up too and didn’t want to let anyone down. He is a man trying to make himself the best he can at his job, and he had to do what he had to do. I don’t see this a bad choice in his career, look how it worked out for him thus far. Now I am not at all saying that I believe that this illegal drugs should be legal, but I am asking the question how can you attack someone with such force when all he was trying to do is increase what he is worth, become better and maintain his job.

Michael Phelps caught smoking marijuana(Americas No. 1 Cash Crop) in a college dorm. He is 23 years old. This in itself is a fatal flaw. When I person is forced to grow up too fast you miss an extremely well defining period in your life which I believe is needed to remain sane for the rest of your life. He just came back from a different country with the most gold medals won EVER. This man is on top of the world. He didn’t think that anything could bring him down. It did. His fatal flaw.

By the Greek standards these men are still considered heroes, fatal flaws included, and I tend to agree….

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.-Gandhi
goodnight

Heroes

As I was sitting down on a friends couch watching the finial seconds of the football season tick away, I started reminiscing on how much I missed college football, and remembered why I liked it so much more than the NFL stuff. As I searched you tube for some of the more insane highlights from this college football season I stumbled across one of the best montages I have ever seen. This excellent clips from the 2008/2009 season are put on accompanied by a new song called “heroes” by David Cook. This song is absolutely perfect for the recap of the football season.

Gets me thinking a lot about the words said in this song, talks about how all these “heroes” come and go, and it is quite a powerful thing to watch, as we see countless of these athletes, some only a couple of years older than myself, become such heroes in my eyes and the eyes of so many. Its incredible to see some of these images. The one that extra special is the clip where the Cincy wide out Gilyard ran into the stands after a ball and ran into a kid with the bear-cat colors all over his face. The kid cried for a bit, but was completely overcome with happiness when Gilyard came back over and gave the kid a hug and rubbed his head. The kid was soon surrounded with others his same age, and was even shown giving some autographs himself.

But the most important thing to remember his how these heroes come and go, and how they get 4 years to show what they can do, and they have so much pride in what they do its insane. The most special thing to see is a college athlete giving his all towards a goal, with no reward waiting for him, expect that of a trophy that goes to the university and maybe some bragging rights…. I hope college football is around forever.