There is Still Time on the Clock

Turn on the radio or the television and you are almost assured of getting a little depressed. Things are not exactly easy right now.  The economy is tanking.  People are scared and hopeless.  And some of the things that we are seeing overseas, such as rioting, may not be in our too distant future.  I live in an America right now that is much different than how it was when I was young. 

But I am not ready to throw in the towel.  I am not ready to turn out the lights.  I still believe.  Just like Jimmy Carter did, Barack Hussein Obama and his administration are making it tough nowadays.  But there was life after Jimmy Carter and I am holding out hope that there will be life after Barack Hussein Obama.  After all, I believe Americans need to quit looking for a President who will fix their life.  Whomever is elected next will only be a man.  We can't elect a Savior! 

Someone who has always emboddied that spirit to me is Jimmy V, Jim Valvano.  He was the head coach of North Carolina State in 1983 when they won the NCAA Championship as a huge underdog and in one of the greatest NCAA final Championship games in the history of the tournament.  As memorable as that game was to me, Jimmy V's speech on the night of March 4th, 1993, when he was awarded the inaugural Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award at the first annual ESPY Awards was, to me, his crowning achievement and a lesson I will never forget.

Some of the excerpts from his speech are as follows:

"It's so important to know where you are. I know where I am right now. How do you go from where you are to where you want to be? I think you have to have an enthusiasm for life. You have to have a dream, a goal. You have to be willing to work for it."

"I just got one last thing, I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get you're emotions going. To be enthusiastic every day and as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nothing great could be accomplished without enthusiasm," to keep your dreams alive in spite of problems whatever you have. The ability to be able to work hard for your dreams to come true, to become a reality."

"Don't give up, don't ever give up." That's what I'm going to try to do every minute that I have left. I will thank God for the day and the moment I have. If you see me, smile and give me a hug. That's important to me too."

"Cancer can take away all my physical abilities. It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart and it cannot touch my soul. And those three things are going to carry on forever." 

And that should be the lesson that we take away from this speech and the lesson that we should apply to our lives, especially now and in the days ahead when things could get worse.  Any man and his administration can take away our liberties, they can take away our freedoms, but they can't take away our minds, our hearts, or our souls. 

We can be the ones with real hope.  We can be the ones with real change. There is still time on the clock.