Note: With this blog, I am
trying to mend few facts which I wrongly stated in previous blog. I have tried
to be honest to my heart here. And I do accept that in previous blog post, I
missed few things, but the character sketch of Lance was still correct. Just read & decide. I would welcome any kind of criticism.
Recently I shared an article about Lance Armstrong being a hero even though he accepted that he "cheated" all those years and even though he brought suspicion I respect him and put him in high regard.
As expected, I received lot of comments, since it is very controversial topic; people have their own perspective, about Moral, Heroes, Success, and everything. Many people called me stupid on Facebook; they even said the article was crap. I respect their emotions and opinions, and thank them for bringing me to thoughts of another controversial article about the things which will haunt Lance throughout his life. I am just a mere spectator in this situation, I am observing a fall of a hero in the eyes of those who think that by cheating in races, and by breaking hearts of many he has done biggest sin of his life. And since I did post some wrong facts, I must make amends for it. I could have edited the previous blog, but I do not want to make those people think that instead of accepting my fault, I went and corrected the wrongly posted information.
So another blog dedicated to all
those fans that are still not recovered from the saddening acceptance of
Lance's cheating.
First I would like to explain few
things:
Moral: as we know it, is not
really that small word, it has meaning full of universe, the world's
population, couldn't really categorize really what is morally correct and
what is not. We live in a world where we call Gambling morally wrong, a sinful
act, yet we promote events like betting, gaming, and lottery. We (many
religions and communities) call drinking alcohol a bad thing, not just for
health but for moral as well, but on the other hand, the most profitable
organizations are those which do some or the other business with alcohol, which
includes manufacturing, marketing, selling and serving. I myself like eating
chicken, though many people tell me I am killing a living thing, it is another
topic for another blog post how I defend myself from those vegetarians. Moral,
explaining simply points to ethically correct? Are we ethically correct when we
hop from one job to another for more money? When we leave India and settle in
another country and from there we post on Facebook saying bad things about
Indian politics? There are very few things which one can call morally correct,
if you are in a group of 100 people, where 99 of them drink alcohol, you will
find yourself “morally incorrect”.
One way to scrutinize people who
do something great is to dig up their past and personal lives. Someone said,
Tiger Woods is not a real legend, I couldn’t understand, he cheated his wife,
maybe he is a nymph, but he is a legend in Golf, you can’t deny that.
Another person compared Lance with A Raja and Kalmadi, as their deeds
should also be pardoned if we ignore Lance’s cheating. Lance didn’t run away
with a nation’s money, even if lied, cheated, the money went to the noble cause.
Keep this line in your mind: Can
moral save people from death?
Success, I believe is also a
varying entity. It cannot be fixed, that what would be called a Successful
feat. What you would call success may seem ordinary to the other person. So
this also remains a term which gets meaning from your perspective. Irrespective
of your perspective, if 1000 people think you are successful, would you
consider yourself successful?
Pain: until and unless you
yourself realize pain you would never understand it, a simple headache may seem
like hell to you, while the same thing would look like an excuse if you tell it
to person who is not having it. Simply because I am not feeling your pain, it
doesn’t make it lesser in any regard.
Hope: It helps you; in any case a
hope is a hope. The hope which could give life to a dying person is biggest of
them all.
I took only 2 lines to describe
this term because it is easy to explain.
Now, let’s see, what is hard to
explain: Pain, Harder to explain was Success, hardest was Moral. But Moral
couldn’t give a dying person life.
The most morally correct
character I ever came to know in any fiction was “Yuddhishthir” from the epic
Mahabharata, and what moral did he have? May be I am wrong, if anyone could
correct me, please do. Was he any useful with his truth and justice to
Pandavas? And did he stick to moral all his life? I would love to have a debate
with someone who can try to bring any character from Mahabharata as “Perfect”
and “Morally Correct”! (Wait, Karna was Morally Correct! Do you agree?) I am
not trying to bring down the respect of such a great epic, it is great and I
love reading and discussing about it again and again. But as we see, the
current society is reflection of such epics. Talking of reflection, Movies also
reflect the society, movies where The Protagonist “Hero” takes revenge with
villain with his “tit for tat” rule, he even robs bank to get someone cured with
that money, he probably will sell drugs and we would still “hope” that he
should never get caught, because he is a character played out by his
circumstances. He gets sympathised because we earlier have seen his “Pain” in
his story, which caused him to become that character which he is today. And
when he gets “Success” by taking revenge, or by robbing the bank, we feel that
it was a “happy ending” when he escapes the chase by the good cop who was never
loved for his great deeds. It’s an irony that in great stories, the Anti-Hero
is much more glorified, because it is more realistic.
I am sure, people will say I am
trying to rationalize what is bad, and I am a very bad person, who is trying to
justify worse people on the planet. What is bad? For me, the person who is
stealing money from the innocent people, who is killing innocent people, who is
causing pain to others, is bad. A doctor who doesn’t operate a poor guy just
because he doesn’t have money is bad. A policeman who is taking bribe from a
thief who just stole hard earned money from another person is bad.
Lance is bad. I am not defending
his arrogance, his love for hype, or his cheating, I only want to say is,
there are worse people on planet. There are worse crimes on planet; there is
lot of pain already in this world.
What we lack is Hope! Everyday
hope is dying for many people. Lance may not be a hero you all wanted. He is
just another athlete who doped. Now, He might not be what he was once.
I did some research and this time
I found some facts, which I present unbiased this time.
All in all, Lance is bad guy, who
did some exceptional work for the foundation which helped people survive. In
this world where you have people who could kill for a little money, he proved
that some bad people can still do good work. His foundation, which is
independent of him now, will still help people. He has earned $125Million for himself;
probably he would have to lose a part of it because of cases against him. His
punishment will not end so easily; probably he did all this earn money, but
while doing this, something heroic he did mistakenly? Probably he could have
never stopped lying about his doping, until USADA successfully showed the world
his real picture?
My knowledge about him in my
previous blog was wrong, because there I missed some critical things to point
out his relationships, his luxury loving life and his media love and
proclaiming himself as best, bullying others. I also stated wrongly about the fact
of providing to his family there. He didn’t need the money for providing for
his family. These things actually bring him closer in resembling to Walter
White of Breaking Bad now with his love of being bad but trying to do good
things on the other hand? As a person you don’t want to become bad. You think he
shouldn’t get caught, and he keeps doing sins. The other world which doesn’t
know him, still believes in him because he looks clean outside.
I still believe in the flawed
character which he is, and I can never forget one reason for which he has given
the world what could be his redemption as well: The Hope of surviving. A hero
falls, but I wish the hope he raised will keep on living.
I hope this post is a little more
informative, more unbiased, and I am able to tell my reasons of still believing
in Lance as a hero.
No comments:
Post a Comment