Come Up Higher
I was watching the movie Coach Carter this week; it’s a great movie about the true story of a basketball coach changing the lives of a group of delinquent youths; taking them away from street gangs and bringing them from defeat into victory.
I thought to myself, what a great illustration of our own lives. The story is really marked with a lot of symbolism that relates to all of us.
We are to a very large extent, like the delinquent youths in the story. We are currently living a lifestyle that requires much improvement. So comes someone into the story and he gives the team conditions to play on the team, “Study hard. Get out of the street gangs. Stop partying like before. Train hard.”
However many of us will be like one of the characters; he gets pissed about it and walks out of the team. Most of us are so insistent on the way we live; believing that it’s the best way to live that we shut off anyone telling us a better to live.
This ‘coach’ in the story can represent someone in authority over our lives; our parents, a mentor, or a professor. Often this ‘coach’ tells us not to do certain things, and to do others that may be unpleasant.
We see its our freedom being restricted; we see that someone is trying to come in to ‘spoil our party’, ‘disturb our lives’ or something. But what usually don’t realize is that the reason why this ‘coach’ tells us so is because he wants to lead us into a life of victory.
The point of the restrictions and the unpleasant trainings is for one thing: to bring you into a better way of life. It is not the end (like how most of us thought when our parents did that to us), but the means to an end.
In the end, the players who chose to obey the coach became part of an amazing team of winners; from people who were potential dropouts and street gangsters, half the team eventually graduated from university. Those who chose to give the coach attitude, and live life their own ways; their lives remained as they were.
There’s always a better way to live; a higher way to live. Don’t be stuck in the way you’re living now. Stay open to teaching and coaching to your life. So the saying goes, when the student is ready, the teacher will come.
This ‘coach’ will bring you into a life filled with victory, success and so much more. =)
