Transcendence

Muhammad Ali met a foe he could not defeat. A foe who stalks all of us. A foe who will defeat all of us. As I look back at his life I am in awe of the life he lived. Olympic gold medalist, professional boxing champion, Medal of Freedom recipient, humanitarian, Muslim and conscientious objector. 

His stand against the war in Vietnam did cost him millions of dollars and the best years of his boxing career. He was willing to do the right thing even when the personal cost was huge. We should all be so strong in our convictions and willing to pay the price to hold them. 

The quote below is from Kareem Abdul Jabbar. He is the all time leading scorer in the history of the National Basketball Association and has been voted the greatest center to ever play the game. He is a giant among men. 

To the Muslim community, he was a pious pioneer testing America’s purported religious tolerance. To the African-American community, he was a black man who faced overwhelming bigotry the way he faced every opponent in the ring: fearlessly. At a time when blacks who spoke up about injustice were labeled uppity and often arrested under one pretext or another, Muhammad willingly sacrificed the best years of his career to stand tall and fight for what he believed was right. In doing so, he made all Americans, black and white, stand taller. I may be 7’2” but I never felt taller than when standing in his shadow.

This quote is from Muhammad Ali. 

Impossible is just a word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.

He showed us in how he lived his life. How he practiced his faith. How he treated his fellow man. He saw a possibility we did not. He lived a life we thought was not possible. Parkinson's disease ravaged his body but he showed us it could not defeat his spirit. He transcended what we thought was possible.