Once you’ve seen the impossible, how can you ever stay earthbound knowing what’s up there?
Hanif Abdurraqib, There’s Always This Year
Friends, I barely know what it means to reach a part of the world that others can’t. I must admit that I have lied to you, but only if you were one to assume. I can imagine you’ve thought I play basketball often, that it is my one and only passion, but I feel like I need to tell you now, I am not much more than a spectator. When I was younger, and time graced me more of it, then sure, I can tell you I played basketball in my PE hall most lunches, but I was around 5’7″ then. I had not yet grown into myself, so I don’t know what it’s like, now, to play basketball in this body, with my head much closer to the rim than before. What I do know is what it is to play basketball from a distance, to shoot a ball and see it move the net as it nestles through, not much more.
But, then, as a spectator, I think I’m afforded a certain privilege. I’m thrilled in thinking of my jump shot, in thinking about what could happen if I leapt towards the rim, trusting the air not to let me down, to reach the rim and have space below my feet that isn’t filled with anything. I’m afforded this luxury. Some are not.
Allen Iverson was never meant to make it where he did. Others aren’t afforded the chance. To make it is to say you made it all the way, to the heights of the NBA, to awards, championships and million-dollar contracts. I don’t think I can say making it means all of those accolades; I don’t know if I even like using the words. I’m not one to tell someone their efforts are useless, even if they’ve reached an age no longer friendly to “making” it, even if they never reached a height that seems friendly to “making” it.
People will remember you, swinging from a rim, with your eyes wide open, as if you can’t believe how you got that high and you can’t believe you have to come down.
When one takes to flight, they are making it. There’s an earth you leave, and, friends, it’ll feel like hours before you return, but once you do, your earth would’ve changed for the better.