Bravery

I am too old to be young, but too young to be old. I consider it a time of observation. A time to look back at what events, thoughts, incidents have shaped me while at the same time looking forward to how I will help shape the events of the future. I am not sure that any of us have a tremendous impact, but perhaps in our little part of the universe we are wildly impactful. The problem with trying to figure out our impact is that we don't usually know how much we affect people or situations until long after they have passed.

A movie this week has me thinking about bravery and how it manifests itself in our lives. The movie, Blind Side, is a true story of a young African-American man (Michael) who went through horrors that we pray that we will never know or completely understand. He was "adopted" by a wealthy white family who treated him like their son. He escaped the slums, drugs, and crime of his home and prospered in his private high school, at Ole Miss, and finally was drafted into the NFL by the Baltimore Ravens. His story is inspirational and moving. Michael had to be extremely brave to put aside everything he knew, even if those things were negative, in order to start a new life. Imagine leaving your family, friends, and neighborhood to live with a family that you don't know and don't know if you can trust. Michael Oher was very brave.

The family who adopted Michael was very brave also. Racial barriers still exist in the south and the Tuohys certainly went outside their normal societal restrictions when they allowed a poor, African-American male to move into their beautiful home. By the end of the movie Michael is calling Mrs. Tuohy "mama." Leigh Ann Tuohy resisted the push by friends and family who did not approve of Michael Oher being a part of the Tuohy family. I can imagine hearing "it's just not done" or "what do they have to gain by helping that boy?" The NCAA was so suspicious of the Tuohys willingness to help Oher that they interviewed him more than once to determine if the Tuohys, athletic boosters to Ole Miss, had helped Michael so that they could recruit him to their Alma mater.

In the end, Michael succeeds in winning over everyone who bothered to get to know him. He passed his courses in high school, graduated from Ole Miss, and was a 2009 first round draft pick for the Baltimore Ravens. None of this happens without the bravery of the Tuohys or Michael.

I talked to a college professor this week about the bravery of young people. The world is so different today than it was when we were growing up. He made the statement that when he married he had never seen the ocean and had never traveled out of his home state of Arkansas. He went on to say that his children had done more by the time they entered elementary school than he had when he entered college. Young people learn to be brave very early because they must. While we were insulated from the world by parents, teachers, and church, young people today have the entire world at their fingertips through their cell phones. They are born knowing how to use technology in ways that some of us struggle to master. This knowledge makes it possible for them to have friends in countries throughout the world and to have knowledge about events immediately. As Brad Paisley says in his song Welcome to the Future, "Every day is a revolution" in their world.

So, note to self: Young people can be crazy, disrespectful, flighty, and mouthy, But remember that they are witnessing a revolution every day in their world. Would I handle these daily revolutions any differently? I don't know. I am too old to be young and too young to be old. I am a participant and a witness to what may come....