I’ve been waiting for the smoke to clear or perhaps more accurately the purple and gold commercialism haze of all things Kobe Bryant to subside before I shared my thoughts regarding the basketball legends passing. Given America’s capitalistic fascination with the death of Kobe Bryant and our moth to a flame attraction to the life and time of celebrities, I hope I can steal a few minutes of your attention.
Unless you just returned from an extended stay on a deserted island or this is your first day on the planet, you know that Kobe Bryant and eight other people died in a helicopter crash on Sunday, January 26, 2020. While there is little doubt you were familiar with Kobe Bryant’s passing, the odds are that you didn’t know that 156,155 other people died that same day. Even more unlikely is an awareness of the 6,497 other people who died the same hour Kobe Bryant and the eight passengers aboard the helicopter perished.
I DIDN’T KNOW KOBE BRYANT
I’m not a Los Angeles Lakers fan, nor was I a fan of Kobe Bryant, so the remainder of what I want to share is neither canonization nor demonization of Kobe Bryant. I didn’t know Kobe Bryant.
Like most people, I only know he was a talented basketball player, one of the all-time greats. I saw him interviewed several times after games and on late-night TV shows; he always seemed articulate and witty. I read articles about him, and, on occasion, I listened to sports and political commentators express their opinions about him personally and professionally.
Notwithstanding my statements above, none of those things constitute knowing someone. There is no question; I didn’t know Kobe Bryant.
DID YOU KNOW KOBE BRYANT?
How could I know Kobe Bryant? We didn’t hang out together. He didn’t share birthdays, holidays, or family events with me. We didn’t spend quiet time revealing our hopes and dreams for our family nor our fears and failures as fathers to one another. He never contributed to my life nor the wellbeing of the people I know, love, and care. Nor did I do any of those things for him and his loved ones.
I didn’t know Kobe Bryant. For that matter, how can you know anyone with whom you do not share a personal, reciprocal relationship? How can you know anyone who doesn’t have the slightest idea that you even exist?
So, grieving his loss in an obsessive nationalistic programmed way is hard for me to do. I can’t reconcile all the pomp and circumstance surrounding his death.
THERE WERE OTHERS
Kobe Bryant wasn’t the only person to die that day. Even mourning the additional eight people who accompanied Kobe on the helicopter two Sundays ago feels incomplete, dismissive, and inhumane. Nine people do not make up the total of lives lost on that day.
I suppose nobody in the abhorrent capitalistic attention-seeking media knew the other 156,155 people who died on Sunday, January 26, 2020, so those lost souls don’t matter. If the amount of attention paid is a measuring rod for one’s value, one can only surmise that the other 156,155 lives rightfully shouldn’t matter to us. It appears that the other people were akin to the proverbial “trees in the forest,” they didn’t entertain us, so their lives must not matter; maybe they didn’t even exist.
Thus, we mourn and celebrate Kobe Bryant almost exclusively because he entertained us; his life was the only one that mattered? But on Sunday, January 26, 2020, a total of 156,164 people died, but you wouldn’t know it. A minimum of 156,164 lives was changed forever. On that same day, no fewer than 156,164 families’ domestic routine transformed indefinitely.
EVERY LIFE MATTERS
Routinely groups identifying themselves by race, gender, national origin, sexual orientation, and the like proclaim that their life matters. The assertion is that those outside their group fail to recognize the importance and value of their life. And so, they must state loudly and proudly every chance they get to any who will listen that their life matters.
Yet when someone like Kobe Bryant passes, it becomes crystal clear that no one, not even the groups seeking full humanity, believes all life matters. For if we did, why haven’t we celebrated and mourned the life of the other 156,155 people for two-plus weeks as well? How is it that since Sunday, January 26, 2020, we’ve been universally silent about the loss of life except for the passing of Kobe Bryant?
LOSING A LOVED ONE IS HARD
If all life matters, then we should be equally sad whenever anyone loses a loved one, right? We should find it distressing when any child passes, never having an opportunity to realize their potential, correct? We should find it unbelievably heartbreaking to watch any family try to put the pieces together after losing a mother, father, sister, brother, or child, true?
Death and dying are excruciating for all those who live and who, without a moment’s notice like Kobe Bryant’s wife and family, become one of the “survivors.” Yet, it seems that when we give so much time and attention to one life, we negate the value of other lives. We, perhaps unknowingly and unintentionally, express a belief, pass on an insidious disease to our children that not ever life matters or, at the very least, some lives matter more.
I hope that Kobe Bryant’s passing will serve first as a wakeup call to each of us moving forward that death does not discriminate. Wealth, privilege, celebrity aside, every human is born with an undetermined expiration date. At some indeterminate moment, no matter our station in life, we are all going to have an end date placed on the right-hand side of the dash of life.
BE THE HERO
Therefore, while we still have time, moms and dads, I pray that you will be your child’s idol today. Children must learn that life has equal value, even if people experience disproportionate degrees of fame and fortune.
Children need to know that neither fame nor fortune makes someone a hero. Heroes are the people who get up daily, go off to work every day, and work all day week after week month after month year after year to provide for their family. Parents, it is up to you to show and tell the authentic non-Hollywood media-driven story about what and who is a hero.
Because for as great as our sports and entertainment icons perform in the arena and on stage, they are in every sense strangers and strangers must never be considered better heroes for a child than their parents. So please moms and dads stop encouraging your children to live life vicariously through people they see in a stadium, on television, and in videos.
Instead, be the best version of yourself possible today so that they can learn firsthand how to be the best version of themselves possible tomorrow. Let your children see you living your life as you’ve always imagined so that your children can celebrate life by following the lead of a hero they knew up close and personal, a person they enjoyed a real relationship, not an imagined one.
Love and laugh every day with your children as much as imaginable. Live every moment with your children like it’s your last. Because as the dash of life, which separates Kobe Bryant’s birth and death, prove 156,164 times daily, today could be your last opportunity to do so.
Does your child have a hero? Are you your child’s hero, or is their hero someone who doesn’t know they exist? What are you doing daily to make sure the world remembers that your life mattered?