The majority of humans are solid people. Well, at least I like to think so. This, however, is intended for the less enlightened people who roam our planet.
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To Whom It May Concern,
Hey. How you doing? Hope your morning is going swell. We need to talk.
Relax. Everything will be okay. Well, okay enough. Simply drink your morning cup of coffee, or tea, or animal blood, or whatever floats your boat.
This whole reaction to the DeMarre Carroll injury is kind of unsettling. While many members of our species immediately felt bad for Carroll, showing emotions such as sympathy, empathy, and general concern, there was another group of people — the type of which I don’t fully understand.
Maybe you can help me with that. Your tweets, Facebook messages, and other social media tomfoolery could simply be a situation where I am the one missing the point. I mean, while I consider myself enlightened enough to have compassion for people, by no means do I think my abilities to properly handle emotions are beyond reproach.
If you forgot what we are talking about, let me recap it for you:
During the Atlanta-Cleveland game on Wednesday night, the Hawks’ soon-to-be free agent wing player, DeMarre Carroll, had his knee buckle. It looked horrible. Not only did my immediate thoughts flow to — yes, selfishly — how this will alter the quality of the series; I also happened to think about Carroll from a more human standpoint.
Regrettably, I am a mostly pessimistic person. I thought the worst.
“Did he tear his ACL? How long will he be out for? This is really a shame given the fact that he has to go through all the pain and behind-the-scenes hard work that comes with blowing your knee up, something no fans seem to care about. Oh, man, Carroll could potentially lose out on some serious loot. The generational wealth type.”
All, truly, horrible things.
There were some other people, however, who met people like myself with either a desire to show their indifference or showing a strange backlash to our emotions. Here, let me give you just one example:
@Sam_Vecenie You’re acting like the dude’s career is over, wasn’t over-the-top either??? He hurt his knee for cries sake
— geeman (@geeman215) May 21, 2015
(I am skewing older. Is “for cries sake” a new, hip saying, or did “geeman215” really want to avoid using Christ’s name in vain?)
Why did I need just one example? Because it is all absurd. You can go back to the “egg avatar” questioning CBS writer Sam Vecenie for showing a bit of concern for Carroll, but all you will find is the egg calling him “too sensitive” for acting like a person who has “over dramatized” the situation.
This is where the two subgroups, the people who showed compassion for Carroll and those who did not, meet at a fork in our viewpoint-based roads.
Nevertheless, this isn’t really about that, either. By no means does it matter if you attacked another person or commentator on a keyboard, someone who was showing signs of human emotion. That person is likely healthier than DeMarre Carroll at the moment. It is more tasteless than anything else, but I doubt Sam Vecenie lost any sleep from the exchange.
This is much more about not showing any sane ranges of emotion for DeMarre Carroll. Let’s be crystal clear here: Yes, he plays basketball for a living. Yet, he does so for “our” entertainment. He gets paid to entertain us. He might not be LeBron or Steph or Michael Jordan, but Carroll adds to the experience of professional basketball, and he potentially just lost out on millions upon millions of dollars that he deserved.
We aren’t talking about a player who has already sealed (and enjoyed) a huge contract. Carroll will be a free agent after this season. His previous contract was for two years, at about 5 million dollars. Again, that is a lot of money. Then again, people are paid for the expertise, supply and demand of their particular trade, and how replaceable they are (or aren’t). To put that in better perspective: There are more doctors in the world than there are NBA players, which means there are far fewer competent DeMarre Carrolls in the world, which provides us with hundreds of hours of entertainment in each calendar year, than there are people who can literally save lives.
That’s why NBA players — and other pro athletes for that matter — get so much money. While most of us value doctors, no one is going to see them perform an open-heart surgery on pay-per-view, or watch two guys on TV debate if Dr. William McLobsterfeet is an elite surgeon. Carroll’s money, noting again because it seems lost on so many of you, is earned just as much as anyone else’s.
In the grand scheme of things, Carroll will probably be okay financially if he planned for such an occasion such as going from a $10 million a year deal to half of that (or less, depending on the severity of the injury). However, he may have lost out on the chance to impact the financial well-being of his children and his children’s children.
Are you okay with that? With a man losing his ability to fully take advantage of his skills to earn his maximum earning potential? Or would you prefer to put a cap on that? Maybe you want to live in some sort of socialist regime which spreads the wealth Carroll will make throughout his career? Do you think he should make as much money as the busboy at Denny’s?
Seriously, I want to know: Why don’t you feel bad for him, or, more honestly, want to tell everyone how indifferent you feel about this? Where are your emotions for another human who, for all we know, could have lost his career on Wednesday night? Do you not feel sorry for dock workers who are casualties of cutbacks or factory workers who lose their jobs when a plant shuts down or a beer salesman who lost his job because a big account decided to leave his company through no fault of anyone in his company?
The salaries are all different, but it is essentially the same thing. It is people losing their careers, or earning potentials, through no fault of their own. No one is expecting you to pity them, but to show anger in others showing compassion for them, all in an attempt to declare how cool you are through indifference? I just don’t know.
Friends, I kind of get it. You have opinions on all sorts of stuff. With social media, you now have a platform to share them on the regular. Granted, you might not have the same size platform as a writer for CBS or other large networks, but your abilities to share are nearly the same now. Think about that for minute. With great power comes great responsibility — that’s still supposed to mean something.
Indifference isn’t the greatest human emotion going around. It isn’t the worst, either. I feel it rather often myself. If you “think” you felt that way last night, though, but still felt compelled to start tweeting at people who were sending out their well-wishes to Carroll, you weren’t feeling that specific type of emotion. You were feeling something else — maybe envy, jealousy, or some weird emotion in which you completely project your own miserable life onto another situation.
Whatever your motivations might be, who cares? Honestly, no one wants to read your thoughts on this particular matter, because it is not as though you are providing a service anywhere near as entertaining or as in-demand as the one Carroll (or even Sam Vecenie) offers.
We probably won’t be friends after this. You are probably mad at me for calling out your “indifference,” since you are probably a miserable person all the time. I’ll leave you with one more thought before I submit my opinions for money on this here computer:
Everyone has a slot in life. Some are deserved, others earned; many have been dealt a horrible hand, while others are gifted with great ones, and most of us sit somewhere between the extremes. DeMarre Carroll’s current, NBA slot in life has been earned. He wasn’t gifted an NBA job. He worked for it. He went to the gym while others were playing video games; watched film instead of subtweeting a writer he hates; and did many other things rather than settling for a life that, in his eyes, would have been less meaningful.
He did all of that because he likely loves playing basketball and wanted to one day maximize his earning potential — with the latter aspect being something even you can at least appreciate. That said, while you might not love your job like Carroll may love his, or are unlikely in the same position to make the same type of money as Carroll has already made, or how Carroll’s life is probably infinitely better than yours, you owe it to Carroll — and, far more importantly, yourself — to not take pleasure in his injury, and to not chide commentators for having the audacity to wish Carroll well.
Your attempts at being cool by showing what you see as indifference have failed, because indifference means not caring. You obviously cared quite a lot — enough, at any rate, to criticize a commentator for doing the decent, human thing and expressing sorrow in the face of a heartbreaking injury. Talking about this injury to the point of being angry at someone else is not indifference… it is sad. You are a sad person.
Because you are a sad person, I suggest you get some help and find a way to become a happier individual.
It’s obvious that you care about certain situations, but you care in the wrong ways for the wrong reasons. Why don’t you try to care about people the right way — hoping injuries heal, hoping hard-working individuals succeed, and hoping that rough situations for DeMarre Carroll and the janitor who lives four houses down your street both see better days in the near future?
You cared enough to express your displeasure at a sportswriter who was sad that a very good basketball player got hurt Wednesday night. Let’s start to care about various people in ways that express hope and affection, not hatred and bitterness. That’s a much more enlightened — and personally fulfilling — way to go about your life. It will probably decrease your blood pressure and enable you to live a lot longer.
You strike me as the kind of person who’s about to have a heart attack.
Don’t be that guy. Learn to appreciate other people — it’s not too late.
Sincerely,
Not an asshole
