ali arms raised

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“We don’t own nothin’, we just borrow it. When you die, another man moves in and your daughter calls him daddy. Death is the tax a soul has to pay to have a name and a form.“

 

———-

Muhammed Ali

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Muhammed Ali has died … and I feel like a little oxygen has been sucked out of the atmosphere.

 

We don’t own nothin’.

 

That is a Life attitude that could drive a person to greatness. An attitude that says today is temporary and tomorrow I gotta get up and start all over and prove myself one more time.

 

To me … that summarizes Muhammed Ali.

 

He was a complicated puzzle to me.

 

Why?

 

ali casual greatnessHe wasn’t satisfied to be just a boxer.

 

He offered none of the humility most of us expect of athletes.

 

He wasn’t just a great athlete … he was casual competing in his greatness.

 

And above it all there were personal things bigger than what happened in the ring.

 

The Ali look.

 

The Ali rules of life. <As Cassius Clay said “I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be who I want.”>

 

The Ali words and wordsmithing.

 

The Ali brashness.

 

The Ali aura.

 

He never relinquished his right to living life his way.

 

Did I like it all the time?

 

Nope.

 

 

I disliked the brashness.

 

But I loved the casual athletic greatness.

 

And I admired the sense of self … and his stubbornness with regard to maintaining his ‘self’ as society did its best to squeeze it into on existence and be reshaped into what everyone expected greatness to be.

 

He refused to be defined as it was defined and steadfastly suggested … no … demanded … that he be judged on his own terms.

 

Was it easy? Nope.

 

Not on him.

And not on us.

 

the ali lookMany of us … me included … balked.

 

But you know what? In the end he taught me to view greatness differently … and for that I owe him a debt. I owe anyone who can make me see something differently … especially something like ‘greatness.’

 

That said.

 

When people say he was the greatest … I don’t agree.

 

I believe he redefined greatness.

 

I believe he redefined how generations would view greatness for … well … generations to come.

 

In fact.

Rethinking what I just wrote … I believe he didn’t just redefine … he destroyed how greatness was defined and created it using himself as the image.

 

He didn’t own greatness … he defined it. And that said … he did it within his overall attitude … “we got nothin’.”

 

And, yet, when I saw he died … I felt like I had lost something.

A little oxygen got sucked out of Life.

 

Why do I say something like that?

 

I was fortunate enough to be sitting in a restaurant in Los Angeles in the 90’s when Muhammed Ali walked thru to a private room in the back of the ali in suitrestaurant.

 

Even though no one knew who or what was happening before he arrived … I vividly remember a slight buzz overcoming the main dining room minutes before he appeared.

I vividly remember him gliding thru the room in an impeccable suit surrounded by large men in impeccable suits … but mostly I remember how it felt.

 

It felt like his presence sucked a little oxygen out of the room. It’s like his presence demanded a little bit more than the rest of us.

 

I imagine that is what greatness feels like.

 

RIP Muhammed.

 

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Written by Bruce