Jeremy and Jack

Life is so incredibly bizarre. You really don't know what to make of it. I mean its something you want to hang onto. Nobody, at least most no-bodies, don't want to lie down in the grave. You want to be thrown into the grave kicking and screaming "No I'm not done yet. I got a lot of shit I gotta do."
Still its confusing. You thought you would have fun, live well and redefine the meaning of the word dignity. Instead you rip out of sleep to the sweet tones of an alarm clock and jump headlong into a life you don't want, don't enjoy, a life that creates ulcers and does not deliver on the promise of dreams.
Every single day.
Been sitting back absorbing this whole Jeremy Lin thing. My first reaction was that this is what we wee folk need. All the time every day. A story about somebody that was overlooked who rises up and says "You were wrong. I got something you can't understand that will drive me to the pinnacle of success."
He was waived twice and sent to the NBA's developmental league three times. Now he owns the NBA.
It was inspiration for me and 300 trillion other humans. I thought if he can do that I can be a writer. Then I re-thought "I am 58. My time has passed. If I'm lucky I might make an extra $50 a month writing for a porn site (hopefully under a pseudonym)."
That applies to every one of the remaining 300 trillion minus me humans who were inspired by Lin. Its just a story. It doesn't apply to any of us. And we know it.
And is he a flash in the pan? Or the real deal? I don't know, you don't know, nobody knows whether they pretend to know or not. Time will tell.
I'm also amused by all the celebrities who publicize Lin's success. The people who are already wealthy, already successful, who have to wear Lin jerseys and Harvard jerseys and talk about what a miracle this guy is.
What do they get out of his success? Are they just jumping on the bandwagon? I say yes.
A random Sports Illustrated that came into my possession inspired these words. I like SI but I can't afford it. So I read Random Old Peoples' Dead Dreams magazine instead.
Finished the article, turned the page and BOOM - Jack Jablonski. Story about a high school hockey player in Minnesota who is paralyzed from the elbows down due to a crushing hit into the boards.
A kid who lived hockey, breathed it, worshipped it, dreamed it - who now cannot walk. Cannot even take care of himself.
I went from soaring conflicting emotions about Lin to horrific reality, pain, disappointment and suffering about Jablonski.
Talk about the spectrum of possibility sports (life) can offer. A guy who is disrespected and misunderstood who rises up and wraps his arms around the world. A guy who clung to belief in himself against all odds and made it work. So far.
Contrasted with a kid who has a passion and a talent and a dream who has all of that taken from him in a second, left only with the question mark of what his life will be for the next 65 years. A kid who believed in himself against all odds and got crushed.
I turned one page - randomly - and went screeching from one extreme of life to the other.
They are analyzing the sport of hockey at the high school level in Minnesota. Trying to change rules to make it less violent. They are looking at the game of football in the NFL trying to make it safer.
Who is looking at the rules of life to make it less painful? Less disappointing? Less inconceivable, less confusing?
People succeed wildly in life and we wee folk embrace them as if they symbolize a chance for us to beat the odds.
They don't.
People get crushed by life and we wee folk point to them as an example to remind us of how good we have it.
It means nothing.
The only thing you can take away from two severely contrasting stories like this  separated by one page in a magazine is that life is a motherf***er.
Give it all the effort and dedication you want to, believe in your dreams until you bleed.
You might be rewarded.
You might be punished.
And there is absolutely no correlation between your effort, your purity of intent, your hard work and belief, and the outcome that awaits you.