8/18/24:

    My mom’s the greatest fighter I know. No, she is not literally a fighter and she didn’t “fight” cancer (thank goodness). Her parents, my grandparents, were the most loving and hard working people I ever knew; but they came from an era of casual racism, and very undereducated backgrounds. Neither made it past the 8th grade, and my mother was the first in our family to graduate from high school. Shortly after this, in her mid 20s, she became pregnant with yours truly. Only problem was this was the 1980s and my dad was Black.

    Given all that, my mom was pressured into considering having an abortion by her family. No one could see how her having a Black son as a single White mom in Indiana in the ‘80s, with minimal education and little income would work out well for either of us. But mainly, I think their xenophobic mindset was the key driver there. Obviously my mom did not abort me, and now I’m a healthy almost-40 year old physician who works with underserved communities. So I think my mom made the right call, if we’re using an objective help:hurt ratio here. It’s a lot in between all of that, and I may address some more of those in-between stories later, but for the sake of this piece we’ll go back to me in 2nd grade.

    My best friend in college used to always say “Ball 2 Live. Live 2 Ball” (*credit H dog and the Chi town crew). And that was both our philosophies. Sports is life. Back then we just loved playing hoops so much it was all we cared about. We just loved the game and enjoyed playing for the sake of it. I knew early in life I wasn’t going pro in any sport, so that was never the mission. I’ve always been athletically inclined, but I didn’t have a dad around to politic for me, and saw early in life how nepotism works. That along with getting to play next to future NBA players as early as the 5th grade who blew me out of the water...It was fairly easy, even as a middle schooler, to decide I should focus on school instead. I knew my mom couldn’t afford college, but I had to find a way to get there in order to rise from our socioeconomic situation and make a better way for my future.

    Back to sports though. I’ve played many of them and only wanted to quit one, and that was football. Growing up in Indiana, basketball was religion and my favorite sport. But football had its appeal, so I decided to sign up along with my friends one summer after our baseball season ended. Bad choice. Football friggin’ sucks so bad. Especially back then before CTE was a concern and we were encouraged to slam helmets together as hard as we could during tackles, play dirty, etc. Add in some extreme heat two-a-day practices, rain, snow, standing on the sidelines freezing your balls off as you watch your better teammates get to play, move their bodies and stay warm…I'm good off that.

    So one day as my mom was driving me to practice and I felt the butterflies accumulating as I contemplated that evening's pending CTE headaches, I asked her if I could quit the team because I hated football. And she said no. She said I was more than welcome to never play football again after that season, but I signed up and committed to my teammates and coach and it was my duty to see my commitment through. I couldn’t argue with that. And outside of not letting me quit, this also taught me how my mom was a logical person, and could explain her beliefs to me rather than throwing out a classic “because I said so”. As with many things and my mom, I can never thank her enough for that moment.

    Fast forward to my third year of medical school. More than halfway through. Despite making it this far, I’m struggling big time. It was quite the transition to go from growing up in an undereducated family in the poorer part of a midwest city to medical school in Manhattan. Culture shock all around, as well as constant imposter syndrome and a lil touch of racism from my professors to top it off. I could write another story about this time, but once again we’ll zoom in on the time I walked into my Dean’s office and told her “I’m dropping out”.

    I was so fried and over it all, I just didn’t care about the time or loans invested in getting that far. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was broken and ready to quit. Luckily she didn’t let me, but rather gave me time to take a leave of absence instead. But the key thing during this time was a talk I had over lunch with my classmate who was an Army Ranger. Ranger Dan, as some of us called him, was the man. So as I was telling him my life story and how I had gotten to the point of being ready to drop out of medical school, Ranger Dan told me a story about his training and time in the military. The details don’t matter, all that matters is in the end, he says in his super cool, calm and collected manner, “Just don’t quit”. Dan told me he and his fellow Rangers told themselves that constantly throughout training and their service, as failure is not the enemy, quitting is. I immediately remembered what my mom told me back in 2nd grade football and everything clicked. I was no longer afraid of failure, what people thought, what adjustments I struggled with or had to make. I was only afraid of the regret I’d feel if I quit.  These days when I talk to students, as the now older doctor trying to pass on advice, I relay a brief version of this story as often as possible. I can’t think of a more important mantra. 

    And to bring it back to sports and ‘He Had Fun’, I also tell students to relax and enjoy the game of life. ‘Sports is life’ has always been a great analogy because I say to them, “you win sometimes, you lose sometimes, you gotta learn how to work with a team, you gotta learn how to lead, you always have to practice and improve yourself and skills, but most importantly, nobody wins every game and you can’t quit just because you’re having a bad one. It’s about knowing you gave your all more so than getting a win.” Stated somewhat more elegantly than that, but not by much. As mentioned in the preview, Robert Horry once said the three words he’d like on his tombstone were “He Had Fun”and that also never left me. Because despite my mom’s hard will and pragmatic ways, she always had a smile on her face and a sarcastic joke ready to fire off. She never let our difficulties in life “rain on our parade” as she liked to say. No “pity parties” allowed. Just get to work, be a pro, and have as much fun doing it as we can. The last hurdle was addressing all the haters who were hellbent on not letting me have fun or do my work.

    My mom never let me fight as a kid, despite often getting bullied to due race and my smaller pre-adolescent size. It drove me insane that I couldn’t just punch these dudes right in their jaw. I wasn’t afraid of the scrap, but my mom made me fear the consequences of my actions and informed me how quickly things would go wrong for me by fighting every battle with my fists. More pragmatism from the best mother ever! So while this made sense intellectually, it was difficult emotionally having to turn the other cheek in a lot of scenarios. Once again I thank her for this wisdom, because I definitely would’ve got caught up in some bad stuff had I not listened. Although, as a current martial artist and lifelong fan of the various martial arts, I ended up fighting a lot, just never in the streets. 

    It’s nice knowing you can kick butt, but thanks to my mom’s advice and my love of Jackie Chan, I always try and kill people with kindness rather than aggression. Jackie embodies a similar spirit to Bob Horry, in that you can tell both dudes just love doing what they do and have a blast doing it. Specifically to speak to Jackie and wrap this thing up, I loved his movies more than all the other great action flicks of the ‘80s and ‘90s. Folks always bring up Bruce Lee in regards to the Mt. Rushmore of martial artists, but no one ever mentions Jackie! I think this is because he chose to have fun in his movies and made them more fun to watch because he wasn’t some unstoppable mean mugging, overly aggressive fella. Jackie was just trying to chill and have a good time always. And even when the baddies would start imposing themselves on folks, Jackie would do his best parkouring, throwing grocery bags, and doing everything else he could in order to not hurt anyone. But when he had to, your ass was grass!

    Cliches, simple & otherwise overused phrases can often be overlooked via familiarity. But these simple phrases have allowed me to get through life and keep on truckin’:

Don’t Quit. He Had Fun.