DailyJim: City of Ali and the powerful legacy of one individual

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is the episode for Tuesday, January 14th, 2024. I'm recording it a few hours after Tuesday on Michigan time, but I am currently in Schiphol, which is the Amsterdam airport, my broken Dutch pronunciation, on my way to Nairobi, Kenya. And I wanted to talk about today something that I'm called City of Ali. And I'll give it a better title, but City of Ali. It is a film, documentary film that I watched on the plane over here.

And part of me wanted to sleep, but then another part of me said I should watch this film. Because recently I had a mentor ask me a question. He's like, so is, you know, you have this idea, you want people just to fund you, and I'll talk more about Leading Hearts Fund probably tomorrow or something, but you have this idea, do you want people to fund you, or is it like two where you're trying to create some legacy, you know, you have organizations like NPR and Red Cross and stuff like this, do they have some legacy that they're going to leave? And I think in the question, and maybe this is not what he intended, but what I gleaned from it was the idea that an individual who is not creating an organization or creating a structure like that doesn't really leave a legacy. And that was the assumption I thought he was making, but whether he was making it, and I'm sure other people make that assumption. And this film completely smashed that idea. The film was about the passing, the death of Muhammad Ali, originally Cassius Clay Jr., who was the Olympic champion, boxing champion at age 18, and went on to be three-time heavyweight champion of the world in boxing. But more than that he was known for being such humanitarian for doing a lot of interfaith work, for just bringing so much joy and so much motivation to people around the world and the film is really just about his legacy it's about how many people love this man and how many and people felt loved by this man, and felt encouraged and felt stronger because of him, or loved themselves more because of him. And so. I highly encourage you to watch the film. It touched me deeply to see that one man can have such an impact on so many people, where people are flying in from around the world to attend his funeral ceremony, where he had the funeral ceremony, he had the memorial service in a stadium, in an arena.

Where people lined up in the streets just to say goodbye.

I think sometimes we don't sometimes I think more often than not we don't we don't realize the impact that we have on others and we think sometimes it needs to be really packaged it needs to be something that needs to be in a building or it needs to have some framing around it. When sometimes the framing is just our name and our body. And I hope you can hear me. There's some background noise. I'm at the airport, like I said, trying to find a quiet spot. But, and.

There's, I'm sure I've mentioned on the podcast before, but when Gandhi passed away, I think it It was Nehru who gave a eulogy and said something like, you know, Gandhi, something akin to like, Gandhi left an imprint on millions of people. Millions of people were touched by Gandhi, and no matter how much they tried to live like him, they'll never live all the way up to Gandhi, but he left a little piece of him in so many millions of hearts. And I think about Muhammad Ali in a similar vein. And I mean, I remember as a child, 1996, I was, what, 11? 10, 11, watching the Olympics when they first started in Atlanta. And Muhammad Ali up there with his Parkinson's shaking, but he lit the torch.

And even right now, it just brings tears to my eyes when I think about it. And I saw the clip in the documentary as well. It just brought tears to my eyes of this man that wouldn't give up, wouldn't give up. You just keep fighting. And again, it wasn't about the physical fight all the time. Sometimes it was the emotional, the spiritual fight. It was the fight to love.

And...

Yeah. One of the pastors in the film says, it's so loud here. One of the pastors in the film says, you know, before James Brown said, I'm black and I'm proud. Muhammad Ali said, I'm black and I'm pretty.

And he taught so many people he said he brought so much love for black people and especially from black people he said a lot of black people learned how to love themselves because of Muhammad Ali and if that's not a legacy I don't know what is if that's not a legacy having millions of people, they estimated something like a billion people tuned in for his funeral now I don't think a billion people tuned in but like, lots and lots of people around the world tuned in for this man's funeral, that's not a legacy I don't know what is, isn't that what we all dream of that people remember us that people's lives were touched by us.

Sometimes it's just a smile or a little fist bump, you know.

Sometimes it's just the really little things.

I'm sure I told you before, but a guy came up to me at my 20-year high school reunion. He said, hey, I've been meaning to talk to you for 20 years. He says, yeah, you came up to me near graduation and you said, hi. He looked me in the eyes and I said hi to you back but my head was down and my dad was next to me he says why was your head down when you said hi to that gentleman, and then this guy said you know after that I went back and I reflected on this a lot about how anxious I am in social situations and shy and afraid and it really helped me change my life so thank you and I was like huh? Because I said hi to you I mean I don't know if I said it that way but just I was so shocked because I said hi to the guy. But how many people don't say hi? How many people say hi but they don't actually look at the person?

I think we over, I think we underestimate the impact we have on the world, and how much we are either pulling people up or pulling them down. Lifting them up, pulling them down.

And I want to be that force that keeps lifting people up. Even when they give up hope. Pick them back up.

Believe in them more than they believe in themselves. Until one day they believe in themselves so much.

So...

So, yeah, I think one individual can have quite a legacy, and I don't think the individual needs to start an organization. I don't think the individual needs to do some kind of packaging of it so much. I think we have these impacts, whether we want to or not. If you've seen the movie It's a Wonderful Life, or if you've seen the movie or read a book about Christmas Carol, this idea that if we're not there, how does it impact? What's life like if we're not there?

And we touch a lot of lives.

So again, we're touching people's lives all the time. How do we want to touch them? We want to lift them up or we want to pull them down with us? So I hope you want to lift them up. In other words, I hope you lift yourself up and pull people up with you.

Because if you give up, how many people are you going to drag down? But if you don't give up, if you keep fighting, how many people are you going to inspire? How many people are you going to lift up? How many people are going to fight another day just because they saw you do it and they know it's possible?

That's what I'm talking about. All right. Well, I'm going to go try to catch this flight and some sleep or who knows what conversation with a guy. It might be on my podcast later. I met some guy from Ghana. He's here with his two little kids. And he's an air traffic controller in the Air Force in Ghana. I said, man, that's fascinating. Like, I have mad respect for the stuff you do in air traffic control. And he's just a really sweet gentleman. His son got hurt, and just the way that he was caring for his son just warmed my heart. So, yeah, we're touching people all the time, but they're also touching us emotionally.

And if that's not the point of living, I don't know what is. All right, talk to you all tomorrow. Bye.