This video of ESPN’s Stuart Scott accepting the Jimmy V Perseverance Award is about way more than living with cancer – as if that would not be reason enough to watch. You can watch from the beginning, or pick it up at 6:50 when his speech begins, but either way you will be both inspired and enlightened.
The “take away’s” for me are:
1.?? ?Think bigger. Whatever the challenge, address it with your eyes focused on whatever you believe matters even more. For Scott, that means his family, especially his kids, but it could be anything.
2.?? ?Work hard. Push yourself as much as you can, as often as you can, even when you don’t know – can’t know – what the result will be. The work itself is a powerful result.
3.?? ?Fighting equals winning. If you are in the fight, if you are trying to make it better, you are winning.
I believe in all three of those insights, and I work hard at living them – sometimes finding it very hard to do so, especially the third one. In fact, I almost turned off the video at that point feeling frustrated by the fact that there seemed to be no place for losing, for giving up with dignity, for allowing one’s self to feel defeated, as I think we all do at one time or another. But I hung in just a bit longer. Perhaps that’s my addition to the wisdom found here: hang in a bit longer than you want to, and you often find what you thought wasn’t there.
At the 9:30 mark in the video, Scott addresses the very challenge I was feeling. He reminds us to fight and the fight itself is a celebration of life…and that sometimes it’s okay to lie down and rest – even in the ultimate sense of that word. That if cancer takes his life, he will not have lost.
A fighter who embraces that ending the fight is not necessarily a loss – not if you fought the fight well, and lie down on your own terms. If that isn’t wisdom for approaching pretty much any of the struggles we face, I don’t know what is.
So, thank you Stuart Scott. In a world often divided between those who celebrate perseverance, but often miss out on the compassion and love that come from deep acceptance, and those who are masters of acceptance but often miss the intensely life-affirming power and celebration of our inner strength which comes from persevering, you show us a third way – a way, like so much of what we share at TWD, which looks for the wisdom found in each of the more common paths, and invites us to fuse them into something which proves that 1+1 can equal far more than 2. It can equal a life well lived, come what may.
Listed for many years in Newsweek as one of America’s “50 Most Influential Rabbis” and recognized as one of our nation’s leading “Preachers and Teachers,” by Beliefnet.com, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield serves as the President of Clal–The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a training institute, think tank, and resource center nurturing religious and intellectual pluralism within the Jewish community, and the wider world, preparing people to meet the biggest challenges we face in our increasingly polarized world.
An ordained Orthodox rabbi who studied for his PhD and taught at The Jewish Theological Seminary, he has also taught the University of Pennsylvania, where he directs an ongoing seminar, and American Jewish University. Rabbi Brad regularly teaches and consults for the US Army and United States Department of Defense, religious organizations — Jewish and Christian — including United Seminary (Methodist), Yeshivat Chovevei Torah (Modern Orthodox) Luther Seminary (Lutheran), and The Jewish Theological Seminary (Conservative) — civic organizations including No Labels, Odyssey Impact, and The Aspen Institute, numerous Jewish Federations, and a variety of communal and family foundations.
Hirschfield is the author and editor of numerous books, including You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism, writes a column for Religion News Service, and appears regularly on TV and radio in outlets ranging from The Washington Post to Fox News Channel. He is also the founder of the Stand and See Fellowship, which brings hundreds of Christian religious leaders to Israel, preparing them to address the increasing polarization around Middle East issues — and really all currently polarizing issues at home and abroad — with six words, “It’s more complicated than we know.”