Pahabol

"The true meaning of winning you see everywhere in sports all the time. I saw a case of it only last week. I thought the Phoenix Suns were finished after Kobe's Lakers pounded them in a game the Suns should have won and left them trailing 1-3. I thought then they would be so demoralized, so rueful, so dispirited, they would be blown off in the next game and dumped in the first round of the playoffs.

I thought, well, they had reached the end of the rope after defying expectations all season, losing their second-best player to injury and inheriting unheralded players to make up for it. But lo and behold, they bucked the odds, turning into a well-oiled machine with no small help from Steve Nash, the Sun whose shine rubs off on everybody, making them look brilliant, and running off near the top of the charts. (Nash by the way was the only NBA player to protest the US invasion of Iraq. A healthy mind in a healthy body? A healthy body in a healthy mind!) And lo and behold, they came back from 1-3 down to win game after game -- the sixth game conversely was one the Lakers should have won -- and rounded off the feat by drubbing their opponents in the deciding game last Saturday, the likes of which had rarely been seen before.

I don't know how the Phoenix Suns will fare against the Clippers in the second round, or indeed against San Antonio, if they should win. I don't much care. In my book, they've already won, and they're already champions. They've already shown what winning is all about. It isn't about overwhelming the opposition, it's about overcoming adversity. It isn't about being better than everybody else, it's about being better than you've ever been. It's, well, like being a phoenix, rising out of the ashes to soar more loftily into the skies."

Taken from Conrado de Quiros's article entitled "Character", published May 11, 2006.

De Quiros also likes Nash.

What can I say? Great minds think alike.


And another one, this one taken from his article called "Generations", published May 17, 2006.

"Of course, the choice the kids above have made, which is to embrace -- and in Erika's case, even die for -- a cause that history appears to have discredited, may seem to many of us to be more wasteful than heroic, more foolish than tragic. But if we look beyond the superficial aspects of the cause they embraced to the spark of idealism that underlay it, to the boundless capacity of youth to bristle at injustice and fight for what is good and decent, to the awesome power of youth to unleash a storm of energy to do what their presumed elders and betters have found every justification not to do, then we must seriously ask ourselves if we are not in some way guilty of their deaths by dereliction of duty.

We do not ask the questions, our kids will ask them for us. We do not live to make a better world for our kids, our kids will die to make one for us."

Sigh... THAT line-- it's what I've been wanting to say all this time.

Sigh...