You versus Your Era
Clint was a nature boy. And he enjoyed living next door to a park named after another one. And he told me something, Clint, about von Humboldt, and that was this: von Humboldt lived in our nineteenth century, and von Humboldt couldn’t kiss the one he wished to kiss either. Such was the era.
You versus Your Era.
One of the fights, the fights of your life, is the fight between you and your era. Muhammad Ali was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1942. Age 18, he won a gold medal in Rome. Olympian. Then Heavyweight Champ. Then the greatest of all time was in fight with his era.
Change your name. Approach me and say, hey, I changed my name, man. And I say? I say, “Cool, man, it’s your name.” When Muhammad Ali changed his name, people did not say, “Cool, man, it’s your name.”
Hate. (Hate) Hate. (Hate) It’s there. In hearts. It’s the nutrition of some many interior lives.
Imagine how often the then young man, only 22 then, was cursed at America’s little dinner tables by the big man of the family. Then, when the champion would fight all up-and-comers, every one, said, “Well, you can keep your Vietnam,” a panel of older men took his title and charged him with a crime, and kept him from his living for longer than four years. Then he storms back and wins the title again. And he keeps it. And keeps it. Loses it. Wins it back. Where there is hate in the hearts of some, here, in this man, there was a fight. And he fought, and fought, until that name, once cursed, became beloved. Muhammad. Ali.
He fought an era. And though he lost much, he won. We fight our eras, us.
-from New Techniques in Modern Practical Close Combat, written by Steven Conrad
