I'd recently come across a page on Genius that I've never seen before, although it has been here for months. My thanks to Wandawaisu for this meaningful, touching piece! I actually never dug too deep into these issues that were connected to Barça, so I'd never known. All I did was watch the games and hope they win because I didn't like digging too deep into personal information of famous people. But now I know that I'm not always invading privacies when I find out a few things for myself.
Today, I have learned that some things are important and some are not. Humans, being our forgetful selves, can easily forget the important and obsess over the unimportant little details. We don't see them as unimportant when we obsess over them, and this is only one other human flaw amongst selfishness, greed, and addiction. I call this flaw the inability to prioritize and rationalize at times.
It's like that with all of us. I don't think my homework as important and I go play video games, but I regret it later in life - most of the time, the next day. My friend could've controlled herself so she wasn't separated from me and all our other friends in a very literal manner, but she simply forgot that our group of friends staying together was more important than losing control of her actions. It happens all the time, with all of us.
But today, I saw people fight it. I saw people fight a natural human flaw. You can go take a look right on that page I linked above. Everything there is important, and Wandawaisu was very thoughtful to write and annotate the whole page.
One thing that I seriously wasn't expecting was EXACTLY what Fran-Soul wrote on the bottom of that page in a comment box:
R.I.P to one of the greatest managers. He was a great leader and you could see that he was a genius from the way Barcelona played and how he carried his team.I for one always wanted him to win the fight with cancer as he was a great addition to the game.
Rivalry set aside I send condolences his family and loved ones.
•Real Madrid fan (sent with love)
I was expecting a very caring message from someone, anyone, on the bottom of the page. But I wasn't expecting that part about "Rivalry set aside". This was, honestly, the first time I'd seen anybody swallow their pride about something not very important for the sake of something that mattered much more. Well done, Fran, I must say.
But this is a death we're talking about. Of course we set aside rivalries in the face of losing a selfless, courageous, amazing person, don't we?
Not always. I've seen horrible, horrible comments online from haters when it came to a shocking loss. If you have ever seen any of those, then the loss wouldn't be the most shocking thing anymore.
My point is that the Real vs Barca rivalry doesn't really MATTER anymore if someone's life was lost on one side. The other side should still send their deepest condolences and HAVE their deepest condolences. I really think humans should try to fight their flaws for the greater good most of the time, instead of what they do in the following example.
Every school in Canada annually hosts a fundraising run, sometime around the third week of September, in honour of Terry Fox. You know, the Canadian guy who got cancer in his leg so they had to amputate it and give him an artificial one. So he decided to take action and run the Marathon of Hope to raise money for cancer research. Mind you, his goal was to run across Canada on one leg, from the Atlantic side to the Pacific. So he ran, yes, but didn't reach his goal as he got cancer AGAIN halfway through, and had to stop at Thunder Bay. After that, he couldn't go on, and the cancer researchers didn't find a cure, so he died in the end. In our school, we run for this hero.
We ran around a few streets, parks and other schools, and we headed to the pond to run 1-k laps around until we ran out of time. It was a pretty long run, you keep that in mind, somewhere around 4 k/2.5 miles. We all ended up either slowing down to a jog or a walk, as it is impossible for a human being to full-out sprint 4 kilometers without stopping. Well, not all of us sprinted, but not all of us jogged for at least a meter, either.
Most of us just jogged and walked while the athletic ones ran. I, being uncoordinated me, chose jogging and jogged until I literally couldn't keep going anymore. I nearly killed myself out there, but I remembered what I was running for. I never gave up, I never complained, I never gave in to my own desires.
I didn't feel human.
And maybe I am not. Because when I was jogging my final lap around the pond behind a group of girls, I listened to them talking. It wasn't eavesdropping, as they weren't whispering or trying to keep a secret. They were talking like they wanted the whole world to know what they were talking about.
At first, I couldn't hear anything over the sound of my ragged breathing and their giggling, but then I controlled my breathing and strained my ears and I could hear. One of them said something like "I want to walk, this is sooo tiring" and the rest agreed. So I slowed down and walked for a bit with them and take a little break myself.
They were gossiping and talking about their new teachers for a few seconds, so I kind of tuned out. But then, one of them popped up with "I hate running this stupid thing! It hurts."
I wanted to scream at her, "Of course it hurts! How do you think Terry felt with one leg and much more running than we do here?!" but my thoughts were interrupted by yet another judgmental voice: "I hate Terry Fox. If it weren't for him, we wouldn't be running our legs off!"
And, of course, they giggled at that. Girls my age laugh a lot. At everything. Except good jokes.
If you didn't have any experience with immature pre-teen/teenage girls, then you'd be like, "WHAT THEY LAUGHED AT THAT HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE AND BLAH BLAH BLAH..." But if you were like me, then you'd know exactly what I mean.
Human flaws suck. But we have to deal with them.
So overcome your selfish wants, people, and go support rights and needs for the greater good!
