Something Light

…because, I’m bad with words when I’m sad.

I woke this morning to the news of Muhammad Ali’s passing. Since I don’t often stress over the death of a celebrity (especially one of old age and less than great health), I didn’t expect to feel like I would never see one of my closest friends again. When Prince’s, Whitney’s and MJ’s deaths were announced, I felt sad…really sad even. But I didn’t feel “mourning”. That’s not to take away from their impact on the world and how incredible they were, but I just know that death is inevitable. So sometimes, it doesn’t move me really.

For many reasons, I have a very…peculiar relationship with death. But today the gear shifted and made me focus a bit more on life. One of my earliest childhood article readings was an Muhammad Ali interview. Though I wasn’t experienced enough to understand the full context of what he was saying, there was a passion in his language that hit me with the same force his punches hit his opponents. I vividly remember that being the day I fell in love with words (like the first time I heard a Stevie Wonder song, that was the first time I fell in love with music). I even begged my grandmother to buy me a new diary because I felt like the way I wanted to articulate my thoughts from that point forward were too good to be in the same journal as my pre-Ali expressions.

Anyway, getting back to what I was saying about my decreasing obsession with death as a desire for life heightens with me…Ali, his life, his words have impacted me once again at the more competent age of (almost) 28. Videos, quotes and pictures have been circulating all morning on social media and one of them (one of the most simple I might add) resonated so deeply. It’s a quote from the greatest himself that says, “You are your toughest opponent”. And it made me think, hell yea I am. All these years of worrying and fearing and hiding and suppressing my desires, my thoughts, my feelings, my love myself…I did that. That was me. That wasn’t anyone else. And quite frankly, no one has had the power to do those things to me. I’ve been kicking my own ass this whole time.

I recently started fighting back, though, and I can see my strength and resilience because, after all, my toughest opponent is myself (and that goes for fighting back against the me that’s just been mercilessly whooping on me this whole time). All I’m saying is, I’m doing (some) of the things I was afraid to do before. I’m loving unapologetically, publishing my words, opening myself up to new experiences…and those were things that no one else could make me do. It wasn’t until I fought back against myself that I was able to do this…because it took the strength of the me holding me hostage within myself, to retaliate and get the self-imprisoned me going. No one is tougher to/on me, than me.

So now you wanna know how I’m expected to enjoy life if I’m just going to keep fighting myself in my boxing match of a life, right? Well, Ali also said,

“Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.”

What that means to me is, I’ve got a whole fucking lot of responsibility to my possibilities and I need life for that. I can’t sit around waiting to be put out of my misery in this life fight. No! I’ve gotta fight back and I’ve gotta be a champion. Because, with all of the greats who influenced and impacted me dying, there’s likely to be no one left to influence and impact the next generation. That’s scary. Who will push my son? My son’s friends and future spouse and his children? Sure they can read about all of my greats in history books. But what example will he see? I’ve been dared to win every boxing match with “impossible”, and it’s a shame it took the passing of one of the only two man muses in my life to understand this.

Ali, it is because of you that I am even calling myself a writer today. Now, in a full-circle moment, it is because of you that I’m choosing to live fearlessly and without impossibilities. “In the ring [of life] I can stay until I’m old and gray because I know how [thanks to your words] to hit and dance away.” Thank you, champ. You truly ARE the greatest and you always will be. Rest in perfect (pretty) peace, #MuhammadAli.