Novelist Pat Conroy grew up being abused by his father, who also beat Pat's mother and siblings. Then, when Pat played college basketball at The Citadel, he had a coach whose talent was to destroy morale. Do you have someone in your life who is Hell-bent on destroying you? Who loathes you? Who demeans everything about you? Who yells at you, rages at you? Who makes you think that hope is vain and the future unthinkable?
What are you going to do? Pat finally found a voice deep inside of him (the Holy Spirit?) that urged him not to listen to people who were bad for him. Conroy asserts in his non-fiction book My Losing Season that the voice he heard was "the truest part of me. It was the most valiant flowering of my character, a source of pure light and water streaming out of unexplored caverns deep within me." Conroy writes about these "miraculous visitations" that brought him "breathtaking assurance."
Playing basketball one summer with one of the best players in the country, Pat learned "to be alive in the moment, to be open to every possibility and configuration, and to make that moment his, again and again." Conroy learned to open himself to all the possibilities around him, to hold nothing back, to put himself on the line.
Once again, I am being fed most nutritiously by Mr. Conroy.
No comments:
Post a Comment