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Why I walked away
Just before Christmas last year a six foot, 11 inch American man with a face known to thousands—a man guaranteed to stand out in a crowd—vanished.
In a haze of confusion the prodigiously talented NBA Basketball star Larry Sanders disappeared, walking away from a contract worth $USD 21 million over three years. No one seemed to know where he was, why he left a job that made him rich, famous and idolised, or if he was ever coming back.
Not being a basketball fan, the whole incident passed me by, until a friend shared a video posted online at the end of last month. After months of silence the heavily tattooed, softly spoken man in a beanie appeared. ‘I’m Larry Sanders. I’m a person. I’m a father. I’m an artist. I’m a writer. I’m a painter. I’m a musician. And sometimes I play basketball,’ he says.
Entitled ‘Why I Walked Away From the NBA’, it was Sanders’s explanation of what was going on. He had been in a hospital programme for people with depression, anxiety and mood disorders, he said. He had been using marijuana to try to cope.
As he talked, two comments stood out to me. The first touched on his job, money and fame: ‘I think [playing NBA basketball] is seen to be a desirable, lucrative job or position,’ said Sanders. ‘People say, “How could you be unhappy there? How could that be a place you don’t want to be?” The values and the relationships of the people I love around me are my real riches. That’s my lasting wealth … Happiness isn’t behind a golden gate.’ Or—as a colleague put it—you can be wealthy and not rich.
When asked about money, Jesus never held back: ‘Get rid of it all, you’ll lose it when you die anyway,’ he said. True wealth and happiness is found in relationships, Jesus said: firstly with God, and then with those around you. It’s found in doing everything you can to make their lives better no matter who they are.
Sanders’s second comment hit the practical side of how we live and love people: ‘People really like labels. You get to identify something with something else that you may think … Just don’t neglect the “and”, you know? Don’t neglect the “and”. That’s what I’ll say. You say I’m selfish. And I’m loving. And I’m caring. And I’m fearful sometimes, and I’m also brave. We all are more than just one thing.’
In this case, Sanders is so much more than the basketball moves that came to define him. Growing up, he never played basketball, let alone dreamed of being a star player; he wanted to be an artist and still writes, draws and paints. At age six, he lived on the streets and in shelters after his mum fled his violent dad. In the past, he has said his passion is making skateboards and his dreams are to write a book and set up a shelter for battered women.
We like to make categories and put people in boxes: friend, nurse, All Black, doesn’t like that food, loud, has a big nose. It’s a challenge to remember the people around us are more than the boxes we put them in. I find this one hard, but we just need to remember to keep looking for the ‘and’.
by Robin Raymond (c) 'War Cry' magazine, 21 March 2015, pp3.
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