Thursday 11/4/21
I know a guy my age who likes to tell me he's a big Patriots fan. I don't really take this seriously, because I have a different definition of what it is to be interested in something. To me, if you're truly interested in something, you learn all you can about it. I can't imagine not learning. I can't imagine there being more out there for me to know and just leaving it be. He knew I was talking about the five best New England Patriots of all-time--discounting Brady--and some honorable mentions on the radio, and he wanted to give me his list. Everyone on this list was from the Belichick era.
I pointed that out, and he said, "I started getting into the team in the mid-nineties." My thought was: So? And What does that have to do with anything?
I asked him, "And to you that means you couldn't learn about anything else? You were stopped?"
He had never looked at it that way. I wasn't around to watch Luis Aparicio, but he's one of my favorite ballplayers, because of what I know about him. I wasn't around for the Civil War, and I know a lot about that, too. Didn't see Jesus in the streets, wasn't with Napoleon on Elba, didn't walk the woods with Thoreau, didn't sit in on the Beatles' first album session.
But this is what people do. To me, it's not only limiting, it's not only a way to waste an intellect, it's narcissistic. And obviously lazy. But it's narcissistic because it has this element of "it happened in my life so therefore it gets privilege."
Get off your flabby mental ass. Go out and learn. There is no excuse not to. It's the easiest thing in the world right now to learn. You go to Google and you type something in. You can do a lot more, and read a thousands books, but maybe just try the Google. I'm sitting there talking to this "super big" Patriots fan of twenty-five years and he can't even mention John Hannah as one of their all-time best players. To me, that's not a fan at all. That's not even someone who knows football at all. And it says to a lot to me about how that person goes about the living of their life, their low standards for themselves, all of the things they don't know, won't try to know. Tells me they don't grow. Tells me they are complacent and they have no idea what it means to try. This one simple thing says a lot.
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