A Man Named Mohan

When I was growing up my parents would take my brother and me twice a month to help with the Burrito Project, a group that helped prepare food to pass out to the homeless population in San Diego. While the adults made burritos and peanut and butter sandwiches my brother and I were on cookie duty. For an hour or two we would sit on the couch picking out sandwich cookies – one vanilla, one chocolate– and wrapping them up to place in lunch bags.

There was a little old man with a hunched back named Mohan who led the cookie packing. I thought he had to be at least 90 years old but given that I was about 10 I might have been off by a decade or so in either direction. Regardless, while I was at the beginning of my life, he was closer to the end of his own. But he still felt like it was worth his time to spend a few hours on a Sunday morning, sitting with a couple of children, packing cookies into little plastic bags because it meant that someone else enjoyed their lunch just a little bit more that day. 

Mohan and I were generations apart, were not born in the same country, did not follow the same religion, were not the same gender and therefore saw the world through completely different lenses. Under other circumstances we may or may not have disagreed on many things. Our identity, though, as we sat together in that house, was not defined by any of our own innate characteristics, but in what we could do for others. So in my life, I try to remember that the most important thing is not what I do, how old I am, what room I am in, who I am with or what platform I have. The question remains, what can I do for others?

May we take that energy into 2022. Happy New Year!

For White People

For the last month, in the wake of the movement sweeping across the country, I’ve watched the sports world react. I’ve been involved in conversations within youth sports and in figuring out how our elite athletes can use their platform to call for action.

The responses I've seen have been overwhelmingly positive and I’ve been impressed by so many people in the sports community throughout the whole country who have been openly trying to learn more and to step up and act: the 12 and under softball team in Oklahoma City who wore Black Lives Matter jerseys to their game; the Princeton Volleyball teams who came up with an eight part action plan that they’ve committed to publicly; the kids who have joined in conversations and asked questions about how they can be better allies; and the many Black adults and children who have been willing to share their own thoughts and experiences even though it is not their job to do so.

Then, of course, there have been other responses (all from white people) -- “All lives matter.” “Shut up and play.” “Keep politics out of sports.” Or, my personal favorite, “Go to hell.”

But the one that stood out to me was the response of a parent who didn’t think a conversation about race had a place in youth sports. Which I think is a very common stance. It stood out because at the end of their message, after saying that agendas and politics should be kept out and the kids have “been through enough” the last few months, they finished with--

“This said, black lives do matter.” 

No. Nope. We don’t get to do that. We don’t get to say that Black lives matter and then define the spaces in which they matter. Saying that Black lives matter is not, or should not, be solely about the right of a person to literally not be killed but also their right to live a full life unhindered by prejudice. When we carve out those spaces -- when we say we can talk about it just not in sports, not in schools, not in business, not in entertainment-- we are carving out pieces of those Black lives that matter. 

My Black friends and teammates do not stop being Black when they walk into the gym. And just as importantly, I do not stop being white when I walk into the gym. I show up with all of who I am, the sum of all of the experiences I have had. And I do not get to drop my privilege off at the door like my backpack when it is that same privilege that helped bring me through the door in the first place.

We can’t say that the topic of race does not belong in this space when you and I have both walked through convention centers amidst a sea of mostly white faces. That is not a natural occurrence; that sea is man-made. I understand that youth sports clubs and other organizations are businesses and you want them to be neutral and they want to be neutral but when we don’t talk about it or act on it we are not defaulting to neutral, we are defaulting to white. 

The heroes who we laud for breaking barriers were not neutral. From Jesse Owens and Joe Louis, to Althea Gibson and Billie Jean King, to Jackie Robinson and Ichiro, they challenged the default status. Nelson Mandela said that “Sport has the power to change the world.” But sport can only change the world if it changes itself. And we are the only ones who can change it. 

Love and gratitude to all of those who are acting in support of that change, in sport and beyond.

Without Words

When I lived in France my best friend was my teammate, Myriam’s three year old daughter, Leana. Her mom’s French friends would ask how we got along and played together—Leana didn’t speak English and I understood very little French. I couldn’t ask her about her friends or her school or her favorite foods. But we were buddies anyway and it was really very simple.  

Kids create their own worlds. All I had to do was step into hers and accept it as it was. She’d explain everything in rapid French and I couldn’t understand any of the rules or what she wanted so I’d just figure it out as we went along. Now we’re playing tag…now we’re hiding from something…now she just wants to sit on my lap quietly. And as we go her world starts to take shape in my head too. I don’t know the exact colors she sees or what “monsters” we’re hiding from but I start to see the outlines and I can feel what she feels.

Adults create their own worlds too. And I think sometimes about what it would be like if we all just tried to step into each other’s worlds and accept them. Not to pick things apart or demand that it makes sense within our own worldview or to get caught on what divides us but to reserve judgment and try to figure it out as we go along. If we just tried to feel what they feel. What could we learn about each other if we had the patience to try?

On my last day in France our club held a gathering for the team and fans. Leana walked right into my arms, melted into me and did not so much as lift her head for anyone for the next hour. We didn’t need words. I loved her and she loved me and we accepted each other. And most of the time isn’t that all we need?

Alignment

I found it when I was just a child
The still inside a world so wild
It feeds the calm serenity that lives behind my smile

It’s one deep breath on a busy day
It’s in the space under a wave
I hear it echo through the world with every word I say

It walks with me through the crowded street
Provides me with a constant beat
No matter where I am it lets me feel like I’m free

Whatever comes it will get me through
It resonates in all I do
It helps me learn what I believe so I can find my truth

It’s smooth inside when the road is rough
It grounds me in the things I love
Assures me when the moment comes that all I am’s enough

My eyes turn in when I want to see
It’s written there who I will be
The lines inside my soul that read-- I’m nothing if not me.

Holding the Line

When I was a kid my dad showed us the movie Gettysburg. We watched as the 20^th Maine Regiment took their position on the far left flank. Colonel Joshua Chamberlain was told that he and his troops had one goal: “Hold the line.” If the 20^th fell, the Confederate Army would be able to circle around and overwhelm the Union troops, likely winning the battle that is now widely recognized as the turning point of the Civil War.

As the Confederate troops battered the left flank and it looked like his troops would be overtaken, Chamberlain, who just two years earlier was a professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin College, ordered his troops to draw their bayonets. His men charged downhill, met the Confederates…and held the line.

Ida B Wells was an investigative journalist in Memphis in the Jim Crow era. When her friends were murdered by a white mob for operating a successful grocery store, Wells decided to expose the truth about lynching in America. She challenged the myth that the black people being lynched were rapists and criminals and instead asserted that the motives behind lynchings were largely economic and political.

Wells collected the data and proved her findings in fourteen pages of statistics in The Red Record. Even after her newspaper office was burned down and her own life was threatened, she continued speaking out and raising awareness in America and England, fundamentally changing the debate around lynching in the United States.

When man landed on the moon it was partly because of a woman sitting at her computer. Margaret Hamilton led the software team that wrote the code for the Apollo missions. Hamilton realized at one point that the software for the display system was synchronous—it would not allow one display to interrupt another. But what if there was an emergency? She wanted the software to be able to interrupt a normal display and to be able to tell the astronauts what the emergency was and what their options were in response.   

Hamilton was told it couldn’t be done. The algorithm was impossible. She stayed up all night, solved the “impossible” problem and the new software was installed. Minutes before Apollo 11 landed on the moon, alarms went off in the lunar lander and Mission Control had to make a decision whether or not to go on. Had they not known the reason behind the alarm they may have aborted but the codes on Hamilton’s display told them that there was just a switch in the wrong position. Mission Control said, “Go” and 500 million people watched a human being walk on the moon.

A professor, a journalist, a computer scientist…they are the extraordinary and ordinary people who have changed our world. It makes me wonder who it will be today. I think it’s best if we all strive to live like it could be us and therefore take heed of the examples of their conviction. They saw what was true and what was necessary and, facing naysayers, angry mobs and charging men with muskets…they held the line.