Review: Basketball Diaries

I just finished watching Basketball Diaries, the autobiographical movie of Jim Carroll played by Leonardo Di Caprio.

It's about an adolescent growing up in New York who plays on a Catholic Highschool basketball team with the potential to play college basketball, dreams of making it to the NBA and delusion of invincibility before he starts getting into the drug scene as casual recreation with a couple of teammates. He's at the top of the world but it's only before long that casual recreation leads to everyday habit; lead to obsession and all that potential and dreams gets traded for instant temporary gratification and escapism from the responsibilities and realities of the real world. It's soon that his academics slips and his basketball performance hits a landslide. He eventually chooses to trade in his basketball jersey for a life on the streets and petty crime to support his addiction.

While the story itself isn't anything out of the ordinary or anything I've never heard of before, its the rawness of the individual's decay of character that makes the movie so compelling and powerful. For each hole that he gets dug deeper into, you'd like to believe that the grim realities of what's out there and the lessons he's put through finally stop, but they keep coming. While I don't think I can begin to, or want to, imagine what that harsh realities of growing up and living in New York slums is like, I can believe it exists and I can believe it can sink that low. I think this is what makes the whole movie so credible and profound.

Sometimes I feel being in the Queen's bubble puts me completely out of touch with how tough the real world can be which tempts me to be complacent. That I don't feel prepared at all for what lies ahead at all. I could to a degree understand how Jim Carroll's downward spiral began. It wasn't the drugs that led to his fall, it was succumbing to every temptation, every instant gratification, pride and lack of self responsibility in every scene that did it. In many ways, it was like living a hellish nightmare.

I'd like to believe that it could never happen to me. That I'm strong enough to resist the temptations of the world and make the right decision. But I know I do succumb to temptations of laziness, selfishness and indifference more than I'd like to admit and so it means that I'm not impervious. Now I've seen junkies on the street before, seen lives that live and die paycheque to paycheque and I could let my mind conjure up what path they wound up taking that led them to this point. Watching that movie painted a more vivid and realistic picture beyond anything my mind could ever imagine.

It's watching something like that makes me want to work hard, never settle for anything less than my best and try my hardest to not take everything around me for granted. At times, I have lacked motivation to do God's work and wound up shortchanging his glory for something much less spectacular because I couldn't see the bigger plan beyond my own. And its been those times that I have felt the most regret. It's that combination of growing with God and the consquences of choosing not to is what'll hopefully set me straight. I'm reminded that God will take care of me, but I have to choose to make that effort to take care my end of things and feel nothing but humbleness.

Basketball Diaries....Great movie. Highly recommended.

Brokenness

This one is going to be very profound.

For the past couple of months I've never felt I was ever at peace with myself. It was having that feeling that there's something you are so deeply afraid to acknowledge, let alone confront, that you just often try to avoid it by deal with other issues. I likened the situation to going to the doctors office and being told you have cancer but then you say you have a paper cut and would rather take care of it first. You'd think that it would make perfect sense to deal with the more important issue first, but its the realization that having to deal with it is what makes it so hard in the first place.

Over those past couple of months, I never wanted to admit that there was something that had been bothering the very core of me. Shades of itself surfaced when I blogged about "Stepping Out", "The Difference between Being Mature and Being Serious"and "My Biggest Fear", especially "My Biggest Fear." All of these had two thing in common: It showed me how much of my past life I still lived in and how painful and bitter it was to acknowledge its existence. But why did it matter so much to me? It's because I was focused on trying to be a good example to others that I wasn't being honest with God.

Seeing what Christ has done in my life and in several others had also forced me to acknowledged just how empty my life was beforehand and just how horrible a person I was. Each and every new lesson I learned brought joy and shame to me because it showed how weak I really am and worse, that I chose to remain weak. It was finally admitting that the my own worse enemy has always been myself. That for my entire adolescence, I've carried the guilt and shame of living in absolute mediocrity, irresponsibility and selfishness. It's knowing that I'll never get back those days and missed opportunities again. My mind always knew this and has always tried to shake it off, but my soul was never at peace.

Recently, the constant strain of school, the reality of the real-world knocking at my door and just the overall uncertainty of the future just bore down on me. I couldn't focus. It got to the point where I knew I had to come face to face with my past and acknowledge my sorrow and regrets all before God. Each and every bit. It wasn't until after that moment did I feel peace. That in my heart, I felt I was no longer haunted by my past.

I think this is what they call brokenness. It's choosing to strip away everything you've ever built up, momentarily be left with nothing and trusting that God will provide you with an unbreakable foundation to start over with. I had asked God to do this because I had desperately wanted to stop living an empty and meaningless life. That I wanted to be something better, something great and knowing this was the only way to ever achieve that victory within.

Test of Life

It's exam time, everyone is stressful, everyone wants to just get by, everyone want to leave. Myself included. I was just thinking about how we just struggle to persevere and simply get through, and then I ran into this quote.

Life is a test

Perseverance is a pass
Accepting is a 70
Pursuing is a 80
Changing is a 90

It made me think that perhaps only persevering is really just the bare minimum of what we can do. Even though the reality is that sometimes we struggle with persevering to the point of complete exhaustion. Merely passing the test of life is an accomplishment, but the chance to reach for that 70? 80? 90? That comes from accepting what you have and chasing after more. That's the stuff dreams are made of. A friend once reminded me two things to always remember: Never stop dreaming and dream big.

My new Lent

To follow on the relative success of my first lent. I've decided to also restrict myself from going to specific websites that waste my time constantly.

So: From April to May

I can only visit Yahoo Sports twice a day.
Can not visit Newgrounds or WrestlingInc at all.

The penalty for breaking this is $2 per infraction.

I'm already at $6 this month...this one is going to be tough but it's for my own good.

One Way To Define Love

¹If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ²If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. ³If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,^[b] but have not love, I gain nothing.

⁴Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵It is not rude, it is not selfseeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. ¹¹When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. ¹²Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

I found the words spoke out to me and remind me what truly loving God means and loving his people. Something so refreshingly honest and simple yet at the same time, so hard to be genuine about at times.