You never really know life until you’ve questioned your own mortality. I have patients who have asked me “so you’ve suffered? but you’re so positive!” and it’s been my experience that you don’t know positivity until you’ve tasted true suffering. For some of my momma patients (because us men will never know first hand), the yumminess of mother/womanhood is found somewhere in the depths of delivering that precious little baby into the world. You will never know light until you’ve had a glimpse of the darkness and in that soil of tragedy lie the seeds of triumph.
Stuart Scott basically saved my life. Shoot, he probably saved all of my army friends’ lives… Back in 2001, we were in our early-20s and just starting our service. We were stationed at Fort Hood and most of us deployed together with many deploying multiple times but none more than one of my best friends, Nate MacCarter. I remember 9/11 like it was yesterday. I came out of the shower to see Luke screaming at the TV with expletives I won’t repeat here because we knew… with the planes hitting those towers everything we had been trained to do was about to get really real and a few weeks later Nate was gone to Kuwait.
But I say Stuart Scott saved our lives because if it wasn’t for SportsCenter I don’t think any of us would have made it. Virtually every morning I would either eat breakfast at home with Nate and Luke or in the DFAC (dining facility for those non-military types) with Shane, Jake, Johnny, Brody and Dickie (yes I know there are more of you). But either way there was always SportsCenter.
If the channel was not on ESPN we would change it and if we couldn’t find the remote for the TV, it was not going to be a good day. We would literally wait until the very last SportCenter Top 10 before we made our way to formation.
Had Stuart Scott not had the swag he did. Had he not dropped a “Booyah” or that classic line “cooler than the other side of the pillow”. Had he not been authentic everyday, SportsCenter wouldn’t be and our lives would have been dramatically different.
You might think sports are trivial (and I wouldn’t completely disagree) but back then there really wasn’t a better way to start the morning than with my boys over crappy DFAC coffee, an omelette with everything in it (double meat for Jake and Brody) and SportsCenter.
His quote at 9:45 is pretty incredible:
“When you die, it does not mean you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live and in the manner in which you live.”
Believe it or not, THAT came through in his broadcasting. You could tell he was meant to be there, born to do it and I needed to see it. But that quote is true for every obstacle we perceive to be in our way…
Some might ask, “why are you writing about this on your blog? You’re a doctor.” Well, the oddest trend that I’ve seen in healthcare is that the system most doctors operate in seem to remove them from the realities of life. They wear these white coats, use these stethoscopes and speak with this authority that only seems real on TV. No offense, I am totally grateful for the doctors who save lives everyday and have saved my life twice. My sister-in-law, who I deeply love and respect, is a kick-ass real doctor.
For me, I know I’m doctor but I also know I’m a chiropractor and the beautiful thing about my profession is that bigger than the drugs, bigger than the surgery, bigger than the supplements and even bigger than the adjustments (forgive me BJ Palmer) … is a thing called LIFE and my favorite chiropractors (like my brother, Steve) talk about it… they live their lives well, and best yet, they help you live yours. Or as Stuart Scott would say, we help you, ‘do you’.
If you need another reason, leadership, family and wisdom are all core values we do our best to uphold in our office and Stuart Scott has been an incredible example of these for sports broadcasting, for his daughters and his culture. If I can contribute a fraction to the world he has, I will have lived a meaningful life. We all suffer, but how many of us stand up in the face of it and live our lives full out?
How, Why and In Which Manner Are You Living?