4 the time being

I just spent the last 30 min. watching this powerful video.  I had already heard about this event and read some articles, but I didn't take the opportunity to sit down and watch it, listen to it, absorb it.  Andre Agassi is one of my heroes.  I liked him as a tennis player growing up.  I aspire to be like him as a man still on my own journey to help others.  His autobiography, Open, is to this day one of my favorite books.  He has not only helped me discover my love for tennis, but also reenforce my love for helping others.

Not only is his speech phenomenal, but also is the introduction speech by a student of his College Preparatory Academy, named Simone Ruffin.  The words shared in all of these speeches are extremely powerful, so please watch it and listen, but do so if you're ready to dedicate the full 30 minutes and 30 seconds.  I challenge you to leave inspired and empowered to start your journey to give to this world.  If you want just a sample or an appetizer to get into the video, please read below.

"I believe we have a responsibility to each other.  A responsibility to create more than we consume.  A responsibility to build things that will outlast us.  A responsibility to find our own limits and push through them.  Even when life's challenges weigh us down, make us unrecognizable to ourselves, we can always begin again.  There's always time to thrive.  It's not too late to be inspired.  It's not too late to change.  It's not too late." ~ Andre Agassi

For a link to read the entire speech click here: "Hall of Fame Induction Speech, July 2011." To watch the full video click below:

I also love Agassi's acknowledgement to those important people in his life.  He credits these people as his personal teachers for helping him get to where he is and also continuing to go where he hopes to go.  His dreams have been realized due to his relationships with these loved ones and he intentionally made a public statement of their impact and his gratitude for them:

"Each one of them deserves a seperate hall of fame speech, but of course there isn't time.  So I've written a letter to each one of them, intimate letters, love letters, but they're not private.  I want the world to know how I feel.  So I'm putting them on my foundation's website where I hope they'll serve as a permanent public tribute to those that have made this day a reality.  They're the ones that made possible the highlights, they're the reasons I'm blessed with magical memories that help me sleep, sometimes keep me awake."

And for those that don't enjoy tennis or understand it, I leave you with a new lens of why Agassi loved it or at least what he learned from it and learned to love it later on.  I may not always be able to swing a racket or even hear the sweet sound of the ball spinning off a wicked forehand rally.  But I will always work my hardest to live out the lessons of tennis which Agassi puts so elegantly:

"It's no accident that tennis uses the language of life: service, advantage, break, fault, love.  The lessons of tennis are the lessons of maturity.  In tennis you prepare and you prepare and then one day your preparation seems feudal.  Nothing's working and the other guys got your number cold.  So you improvise.  In tennis you learn what I do instantly affects what you do and vice-versa.  Tennis makes you perceptive, proactive, reactive, all at the same time.  Tennis teaches you the subtlty of human interaction, the curse and blessing of cause and affect.  After you play tennis for a living, you never forget that we're all connected.  And there's nothing quite like a tie-break that teaches you the concept of high risk, high reward."

Thank you Andre Agassi for all you've given to the sport of tennis, but more importantly for continuing to give your time, energy, dreams, and dedication to the lives of others.

"We are here to do good quietly.  To shine in secret.  To give when there's no crowd applauding.  To give of ourselves to someone who can offer us nothing."

~ Andre Agassi

~ beLOVEd ~