My Friend Po-Po

When I was in school there was a man named Po-Po who cleaned our gym. He did a great job, keeping it serviceable despite a hundred middle and high school kids trudging through it on any given day. Every time I saw him he was working, so that we could have a place to play. But every time I saw him he also had a smile for me. Not once in seven years of hanging around that gym did I ever see Po-Po on a bad day. And not once did he do anything other than brighten mine.

Now listen, I will be the first to tell you to dive headfirst into your dreams. If you find that thing that you know in your heart is what you’re meant to do then I’d tell you to go for it with everything you have. After all, the firm belief that Anything is Possible is what has allowed me to live out my own.

But in the course of our pursuit of those dreams, sometimes life happens. You have to eat, to pay rent, to pay off loans. And while dreams are built on hard work and passion, they’re also often dependent on the fickle whims of luck and opportunity. We’re thrilled by the stories of people who have succeeded in reaching the pinnacles of our society but that can’t be the only definition of success. Because I don't know anybody who dreams about cleaning up after a bunch of school kids. But I look at someone like Po-Po—who goes to work every day and does his very best, who improves the quality of other people’s lives, who offers nothing but love to the people in his path—and I think man, that’s a successful guy.

The challenge, I think, as we pursue our dreams or even see them fall away, is to never lose touch with where we are right now. Because who you are isn’t based on some potential future accomplishments or what you could’ve done but your actions in the present. Can you be the best you can be in whatever you’re doing today and can you leave the world a happier place than you found it?

I don’t know about you, but being able to answer yes to those questions...THAT is my biggest dream.

Last summer I visited the team at my high school. I got to say hi to Po-Po as he was working in the gym. And he gave me a smile.

Building Wonders

One of the perks of the weird and wonderful life of the international athlete is the opportunity to see the world and take in some of the wonders that human kind has left behind throughout history. In just the past few months I’ve found myself wandering around Paris’s Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa and the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. And as I take in these sights—resplendent in their design, their color, their grandeur or, in the case of the Leaning Tower, their delightful idiosyncrasy—it makes me wonder what we’re building today. How are we adding to the wonders of the world?

The construction of massive and ornate buildings seems to be a trend of the past. Building the next great palace or pyramid would just be utterly pretentious and wasteful. But that doesn’t mean we’re finished creating grand and beautiful things. Maybe technology is our new canvas. Though it may often invite cynicism, you can’t deny the beauty in landing a rover on a comet hurtling through space or being able to talk to your family face-to-face from thousands of miles away. And for all the power it holds in its little frame, the iPhone stands just as tall as the Eiffel Tower. Maybe these feats in the exploration of human potential are the monuments that we’ll leave behind.

But I’d like to add one more suggestion—that maybe it’s time that we focused less on building things and more on building humanity. Let’s build love and trust and kindness. Let’s knock down inequality and hunger and hate. Instead of building structures that reach to the sky we can build movements that reach around the world. That’s what I want to leave behind. Let our children look around them at the prosperity and goodwill of humanity and declare it a masterpiece.

And maybe that all sounds like a naïve shout into the wind but wasn’t that true of every impossible thing we’ve ever achieved?

Happy New Year