Why Doesn’t Success Satisfy the Soul? Shane Idleman
In celebration of Michael Jordan’s 50th birthday some years back, ESPN senior writer Wright Thompson spent some time with the basketball legend. Thompson gives the sense that Jordan isn’t happy. “I would give up everything now to go back and play the game of basketball,” Jordan laments. When asked how he copes with the devastating fact that he will never be who he was, Jordan states, “You don’t. You learn to live with it.”
All Glory is Fleeting
Thompson continues, “Jordan might have stopped playing basketball, but the rage is still there. The fire remains, which is why he searches for release . . . the man has left the court, but the addictions won’t leave the man.”
Most people live anonymous lives, and when they grow old and die, any record of their existence is blown away. They’re forgotten, some more slowly than others, but eventually it happens to virtually everyone. Yet for the few people in each generation who reach the very pinnacle of fame and achievement, a mirage flickers: immortality. They come to believe in it. Even after Jordan is gone, he knows people will remember him. Here lies the greatest basketball player of all time. That’s his epitaph.
There’s a fable about returning Roman generals who rode in victory parades through the streets of the capital; a slave stood behind them, whispering in their ears, All glory is fleeting. Nobody does that for professional athletes. Jordan couldn’t have known that the closest he’d get to immortality was during that final walk off the court. … All that can happen in the days and years that follow is for the shining monument he built to be chipped away, eroded. His self-esteem has always been, as he says, “tied directly to the game.” Without it, he feels adrift. Who am I? What am I doing?
The Essential Qualities of Life
Culture pushes an illusionary idea of “success,” what is “ideal.” Women, as well as young girls, refer to magazines and TV to see how they should dress and act. Teenage boys consult TV and the media for role models, and many men measure their self worth by what they have accomplished in business and financially, not realizing that a relationship with God, family, and others is the treasure they should be seeking.
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