What We Need

(Just for the record….my last blog was about professional athletes and performance enhancing drugs – I don’t condone it, but I understand it.  Just sayin.)

What we need…..all we truly need is love and respect.

I saw a great interview on CBS Sunday Morning this past weekend with Mike Tyson (of all people).  I say that because my general interest in him is small….thinking of him immediately conjures up images of an out of control man, who abuses women (went to jail for rape), who has fallen from the public’s good graces.

But the story was revealing and insightful.  It portrayed Tyson in a human light….which was obviously lurking below the surface all these years.  Is it an act?  I don’t know.  Hard to tell.  But it didn’t seem that way – and he’s been clean and sober for a little while now….so the clarity he seems to be experiencing appears real.

He’s come to understand who he was, what he wants, and what really matters.  He displayed his boxing belts and called them garbage…that they had no value to him anymore.  Because the truth is, they don’t have value in a true soulful sense.  They have monetary value, but no human value.  They shine in the sun, but have been a canopy of darkness in Tyson’s life.

He was an amazing boxer – that can’t be denied.  And it’s his tough childhood that propelled him there.  But in hearing him talk, the only thing that Tyson’s ever wanted was love and respect.  Just like us all.  Love and respect…the simplest and most vital of gifts.  And this is most transparent when he talks of his pigeons, which he houses in coops, and has done so since his teenage years.  He said he loves them (and I paraphrase) because they don’t ask him for anything…for things, for money….they just are his friends, pure and simple.  It is the draw of most pets – their unconditional love – that Tyson needed, wanted.  His connection to his pigeons is real….and honest.  He gets what he needs from them – acceptance and affection without asking anything in return.

It’s the greatest of lessons….to understand that we are ALL human…every last one of us.  We are ALL desirous of love and acceptance.  It is a human necessity to be cared about and cared for.  It is what drives each and every action….deep, deep down.  It is this need to be loved and respected that drove Tyson into the ring…that fueled his rise to the top of his profession…and also toppled his boxing dynasty.  And what a great gift he has been given if he’s truly realizing that he isn’t an animal, a monster or even really a boxer.  That’s what he did, not who he is.  Who he is, is a street-tough kid who fought to stay alive in his dangerous neighborhood and achieved fame and riches because of his fists…but would trade it all for the love and admiration of family and friends….hands down – there is no comparison.