THE SCENE from “Coach Carter”
I shouldn’t write any of this.
I love this scene too much to not know I tread on hallowed ground.
Please, forgive me for tresspassing.
It’s tough to summarize something that has already been so succinclty put. I’m afraid that I am needlessly over explaining such a remarkably profound peice.
Alas, I can’t help myself. If you take anything away from this post, please let it be this:
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of “A Course in Miracles”
There. Your job is done. You can click away now.
I’m serious. Get outta here. There’s nothing left for me to say.
If you’re staying, then I guess I’d better leave you with something to think about.
I risk ruining yet another amazing quote to break into what this post is all about.
Uncle Ben delivered this widom to Peter in his car, as he was dropping him off for school.
Judging from the look on Peter’s face, you could tell that his words had affected him. I’m just not sure that Peter fully understood what it is his Uncle meant.
Responsibility, yes Uncle Ben. But to whom?
To whom are those with great power responsible?
At first, I thought that people with power are responsible to other people, especially those who have none.
Spiderman is, afterall, a superhero. He defends those who cannot defend themselves.
The power that the hero possesses comes with a selfless intent.
Now, after watching, and re-watching the monologue above, and thinking about it, I’m suddenly not sure.
Uncle Ben wasn’t talking to Spiderman in the car. He was talking to his nephew, Peter Parker.
When he told Peter that he had great power, and that it came with responsibility, he didn’t mean it in the context of swinging from tall buildings, clinging to walls, and playing upside down tonsil hockey.
He was talking to a high-school kid. A kid who’d been bullied. A gifted student, coming from tragedy, learning to overcome the challenges of his life.
Spiderman’s a hero. In comparison, Peter Parker hasn’t saved anybody.
Except himself.
And maybe that’s what’s most important.
Maybe, as Timo Cruz demonstrates, people with power are responsible, first and foremost, to themselves.
That may sound selfish. Afterall, we love Spiderman because he helps others. What would we think of him, if he was only using his powers to help himself?
That sounds more like a villain, no?
And Timo Cruz is just a guy. He doesn’t have any powers, what does he have to do with a superhero?
Well, it’s true that helping yourself can seem selfish.
This is the problem that relationships face. A partner may be so determined to make their significant other happy, and fulfill their needs, that they neglect their own. They consider it selfish to tend to themselves.
Understanding that by tending to their own needs, setting their own house in order, they will benefit the relationship and make them and their partner happier, is what liberates them from this dynamic.
That they are one half of a whole, and bettering their half will make the whole stronger.
Easier said than done, I know. But that is the path to removing yourself from the vicious cycle.
Learning not to villain-ize yourself, for focusing on you.
And while Timo Cruz is just a man, he is no Regular Joe. What he overcomes is nothing short of remarkable. Even, maybe, more remarkable than what Spiderman has gone through.
To dedicate yourself to a man, who threw you against a wall and threatened to whoop your ass on the first day of practice?
To quit?
To have the humility to comeback.
The drive to run 1000 sets of suicides and do 2500 pushups, while that same coach barks at you the whole time. Telling you to give up. To go home. That the goal he’s tasked you with is impossible.
To find out that he’s right.
And still, when your teammates run those sets you couldn’t complete, and do those pushups you couldn’t finish, he benches you.
You ride the pine. You stick to his code of conduct.
You maintain a grade-point average that no one, but he,enforces. Even when the whole town is on him to let his rule slide.
Then, when everyone wants to take away his job, and give you what you want, you choose to stand by him. When he needs you most.
And recognize, in that moment, what he’s taught you.
About yourself.
That you are responsible. For everything that you do, everything that you did, and all that has come from that.
You inspired the respect of your coach. Your teammates. You earned your spot.
You know that the team has been made better, because you are better.
How can that be selfish?
Recognizing you are one peice of a puzzle, and without you the whole work is left incomplete.
Here we watch a man liberate himself from his own fear.
Fear of the limitless potential within him. Fear of his own power.
Fear that he may squander it. Cheat himself, at the expense of others. Those around him and closest to him, his brothers who now prosper with him.
The look on their faces as he speaks, the looks they give each other …
Are they not better off now, for who he is?
Timo Cruz owned his circumstances. Even the things that weren’t his fault.
He took responsibility for his power.
Isn’t that what heroes do?
