It occured to me the other day that there are an awful lot of people out there with #3's plastered all over their trucks and cars in memory of the Nascar driver Dale Earnhardt that died during a race some time back. An awful lot. More than I have ever really noticed before...maybe one out of every hundred cars or so. That's really nice. I think it's good that people have a passion for someone outside themselves, someone that they can consider a hero, someone who -- in their passing -- they miss enough to share their grief with the world. It's good to identify with someone else, to cheer someone on, to care. But then, I thought, he was a race car driver...not a hero.
That's not to say that I mock his passing or tease his fans who grieved his untimely death. It's not to say that I do not find sorrow in the death of any soul that once walked this earth. It's not to say that I am trying to cheapen the man's life in anyway, I mean, the guy was the best in the world at the one thing he loved to do more than anything else, and for that I envy him...but something is uneasy about all the fanfare years later.
It occurred to me that I have yet to see a bumper sticker honoring the seven Discovery astronauts who perished in their attempts to further mankind through exploration and scientific discovery. I have never seen any sort of enduring public display of sorrow over the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the last great proponent of peace in the Middle East. There are no mentionings of the lone man that stood in front of the tank in Tienamen Square. No thank yous to those that have died or put their lives on the line to change life on this earth in some grand and glorious way.
No, we forget all of them...but we remember some guy who drove a car around a big circle real fast. Where are our priorities? Remember Dale Earnhardt and TuPac Shakur, but who the hell are Mother Theresa and Roger B. Chaffe? I don't understand, and I don't think I ever will, and if people want to yell at me for thinking this way, go right on ahead...I don't care. But it saddens me. It does. And it pisses me off that I can't understand it no matter how hard I try. Oh well.
That's not to say that I mock his passing or tease his fans who grieved his untimely death. It's not to say that I do not find sorrow in the death of any soul that once walked this earth. It's not to say that I am trying to cheapen the man's life in anyway, I mean, the guy was the best in the world at the one thing he loved to do more than anything else, and for that I envy him...but something is uneasy about all the fanfare years later.
It occurred to me that I have yet to see a bumper sticker honoring the seven Discovery astronauts who perished in their attempts to further mankind through exploration and scientific discovery. I have never seen any sort of enduring public display of sorrow over the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the last great proponent of peace in the Middle East. There are no mentionings of the lone man that stood in front of the tank in Tienamen Square. No thank yous to those that have died or put their lives on the line to change life on this earth in some grand and glorious way.
No, we forget all of them...but we remember some guy who drove a car around a big circle real fast. Where are our priorities? Remember Dale Earnhardt and TuPac Shakur, but who the hell are Mother Theresa and Roger B. Chaffe? I don't understand, and I don't think I ever will, and if people want to yell at me for thinking this way, go right on ahead...I don't care. But it saddens me. It does. And it pisses me off that I can't understand it no matter how hard I try. Oh well.
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