The loss by the Tigers on Monday was no calamity. It was the last game played during a very successful season. Before yesterday's game, many people in this country could not name one person on the roster other than Derrick Rose. Yesterday the nation saw that the Tigers were a team full of stars capable of winning it all. If the Tigers and Jayhawks played 10 games, each team woud probably win 5 each.
I'm not a Memphis Grad, but I am a native Memphian and a Memphis Fan. I see many good things that can come out of the loss by our basketball team. First, it did not take us longer than the night after the game to wake up the next morning and realize we had lives to lead and a city full of the same problems as the day before. Secondly, we still witnessed how our boys, gallant in defeat, came back to campus wishing that they could have "done it for the city" knowing how much it meant to us.
Last week, we lost a championship. That same week 40 years ago, we lost a great man of the ages, Dr, Martin Luther King, Jr., and out of that apparent calamity more of us were able to see each other in this country as equally worthy of Life, Liberty, and a pursuit of Happiness. That same week 1975 years ago, we lost our Messiah to a brutal public execution. There was as much fear and despair among the people as ever after that, but from that apparent calamity many of us in this country and in many other parts of the world see each other as equals in the eyes of God and are able to love one another as He loved us.
Well, OK, guess what. We are left to do the same in this city of Memphis. Because of the press everyone around the country knows how much this victory would have meant to us. People everywhere are hearing about corruption in politics and poverty and crime and the flooding of the Mississippi River. Well, it's not for 11 college-age men to do for this city what we as the other 1,200,000 residents of the Memphis area have to do for ourselves. As CDR said several times to the press during the tournament run, "We're making our own happiness". We as individuals as well as collectively as a community have to follow their example and make our own happiness. We should not fear living up to or being held to a higher standard in our daily lives, even though we don't have a Coach Calipari breathing down our neck in practice.
Oh, and another thing. Cornell West has it wrong and Jesse Jackson had it right. It's more about the color of the jersey than the color of the skin. Race doesn't matter. It's a construct used to divide and achieve power by those with enough charisma. We are fooled into thinking race matters by accepting what the community leaders insist at times and our role models in the entertainment industry sing to us that happiness is a zero-sum game. We are fooled into thinking that race matters when we look into only into the eyes of those in our own race and wish them "have a nice day" at the checkout line. We are fooled into thinking that race matters when we look at a little white boy and see the promise of the future, but see a little black boy and see what can go wrong with his future, and see a little Mexican boy and see our children's jobs being taken in the future and see a little Asian boy and see whose grass our children will cut in the future. I can tell you that any of those scenarios can happen to any one of those boys.
True lasting joy, like the joy we felt for our Tigers this year, is collective. It's shared by the community and from that it lasts and sustains itself through community life. The pain of discipline leads to Joy. The pleasures of irresponsibility lead to misery. How ironic is that? Just ask any of the Tigers about the pains of 2-a-days.
Memphis will be a united, prosperous, and vibrant city one day. If we go down the path we are going now, it will take a generation or so, and many of us alive today won't be around to see it. However if we seize control of how this goes, like the Memphis Tigers have done successfully 38 times during the basketball season, we can turn this around sooner. If you believe in God, follow what we know to be true and,
-Know that you were created to be happy and to prosper in this life and the next, and know that God created everyone else the same way whether we or not we care to recognize it. So treat them as such!
Whether or not you believe in God, then you know deep down that every person has the power to create their own happiness. So if you're an adult, let's not blame our misery on anyone else. Not our boss, not Willie Herenton, not John Calipari, not our parents, or our Baby-Daddy, or our ex-spouse.
If we fix the way we treat ourselves and each other, there will be the Joy of making the Final Four in this city year round. Ohhh.. and maybe a BCS championship in football for the Tigers as well.
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