Word choice

I once wrote something about Michael Jordan.  It was for a public speaking class back in college, which required us to prepare a speech or something of that sort we had to deliver in front of an audience.  What I have written was hardly original, though.  It was, you may say, just a collation of select clips from a number of magazines I borrowed from my sister’s collection.  Call it plagiarism if you wish to, but it was still some darn research for me.  The introductory paragraph was originally written by me, anyway.  That would at least cover up for the theft.

I chose His Airness as my topic not because I share the same passion for the ballgame that he plays (I can barely get the ball in the hoop), nor that I had any inclination in sports writing.  It was plainly for convenience’s sake–MY convenience’s sake.  Had it not been for the magazines I took the articles from, my speech would have gone something like “Michael Jordan is a great athlete.  He is a true hero.” or something cheesier and shitty.

To write something was always an ordeal.  I remember the instance when my high school teacher put a note on my essay sheet, “Bad handwriting”.  She could have dropped ‘hand’ easily as my composition was simply full of bull, but she was, apparently, kind enough to not abase an adolescent who just could not pen a decent essay or write something worth reading.

I think I digressed a bit.  Anyway, my speech turned out fine.  It had a title “Immortalizing the Power of Human Strength”, as was coined by a brilliant classmate of mine who was a good writer, by the way.  I was supposedly the Mayor of Chicago at that time and I was to deliver the speech in front of the Chicago Stadium in time for the unveiling of Jordan’s statue– clearly a make-believe set up as you exactly would have thought.

The speech was alright, but it was the title that had this profundity one could not just ignore.  I say profound because it tells of a goal every person wants to achieve, which is to leave a mark. Each of us feels we can make a difference.  A difference that, regardless of magnitude, would somehow fill up the void that shouts from our innermost beings.

Elvis.  Mandela.  Hemingway.  They all made their presence felt.  Each played a stellar role from music to human rights to literature.  Michael Jordan’s incomparable athleticism may have been his way of leaving his own mark, or it may even be how he has transformed the number 23 into THE number that it is today. 

I want to leave a mark myself.  I just don’t know when and what it will be.  But I’ll be leaving something behind, definitely.  Something beyond my decaying corpse that would feed parasites I have never even known.

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