P a g e | 35
Patience. We’re all too often impatient. The Confucian quote was used by former West Coast Eagles coach, Michael Malthouse in describing his reflective approach after a loss. You can tell current West Coast coach, John Worsfold, has the same approach. At times, we just have to be patient and grin and bear it. It’s going to take some time, perhaps even years before the football club turns its fortunes around on the ground. If we think of it this way it might help. Life is about waiting. It’s the biggest waiting room. While we’re here we get to know and live with some wonderful people, we get to learn lots of things, and if we’re fortunate, we experience many wondrous (and not so many painful) things. Just think of the journey of developing this emerging young West Coast team that can’t quite win yet; that’s exciting in itself--a successful future awaits; possibly another premiership. The hunger within these young players will get them there. They have all of it in front of them, which is far better than having everything behind us. There’s everything to live for. All of us have to wait for things. Nothing worthwhile comes easy or straight away. But time does come and change does happen. It often happens slowly enough for us to enter into it, to get involved, to think, and to engage with it. Life is otherwise too quick for us. Why do we get frustrated that we have to wait? It will all be over far too early in any event. Life... ponder. Impatience brings discontentment.
We Must Transcend The Things That Hold Us These words of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter’s, in the motion picture of the true story, “The Hurricane” (1999) are etched in golden truth for anyone who’s had a real life battle of the titans and won. It’s like the summation of the movie in one short statement; how a fighter who had dealt with massive injustice all his life had to deal with it big time, to break a tortuous 20-year incarceration—the fight for his freedom against a system of inherent and rampant corruption. The part of “The Hurricane” when Carter (played brilliantly by Denzel Washington) says “We must transcend the things that hold us,” is particularly poignant. Facing incredible odds to fight the system, whilst simultaneously maintaining his sanity, Carter was faced with making such a resolve—it was crucial for his survival. It required a commitment to himself; a commitment to flip his world upside down in order to stay in the game. He begun
Copyright © 2007, 2008, 2009 S. J. Wickham. All rights reserved Worldwide. May not be used without permission.