Today a young man from South Africa, Louis Oosthuizen won the British Open. Well he did more then win, he crushed everybody else in the field wining by 7 strokes. Maybe at first nothing that interesting there. Some good looking white dude won a golf tournament in Scotland.
But his parents were not rich. They couldn't afford for him to play golf. So for years and years he was supported by a foundation set-up by fellow South African Ernie Els (still one of the top 10 golfers in the world).
As I watched Oosthuizen just lap the field today I might have been seen doing a single person wave in my house. Maybe even yelling at the TV, "that is what I am talking about."
You see for as long as I can recall I've always thought the next Mozart, da Vinci, or Einstein is living in some slum somewhere. Living among us this very second. A mind that could change the world. They just need a little help and support.
As I said in the title I get emotional about this topic. Not something I often talk about. I wish I had a mind that could change the world. I guess who doesn't really if you ponder shit for a few minutes. But I don't and I am cool with that.
However I've thought about this a lot. There must be some little girl fighting for her life in Africa at this very second that if somebody would teach her 1+1=2 in the not to distant future with some help she might later expand on E=MC2. Some kid in a slum in India if put in front of a piano would compose something that would be listened to for the rest of time. Some child in a housing project in the US, if just given a little help, a push, could come up with ideas nobody has ever thought about.
It reminds me of maybe my favorite political movie of all time, The Girl in the Cafe (the whole movie is on YouTube). It is about this British policy wonk that invites this women he just met to a G8 conference in Iceland that deals with poverty and hunger. She is much younger. Not "educated" like him. He is the man that tell the PM what to do, but nobody knows his name.
While he is in meetings each day she sits in their hotel room reading his briefing documents. She is stunned to learn that 100M children live near death each day. One dies every three seconds for the lack of food and water. She pushes, they're going to fix it? Right. She is told, well no. We'll just employ half measures and talking points. At a state dinner she loses it and says:
And tomorrow eight of the men sitting around this table actually have the ability to sort this out by making a few great decisions. And if they don't someday somebody else will and they will look back on our lot and say, people were actually dieing in the millions unnecessarily. Right in front of you on your TV screens. What were you thinking? You knew what to do to stop it from happening and you didn't do those things. Shame on you. Shame on me.
So that is what you have to do tomorrow. Be great instead of being ashamed. It can't be impossible. It must be possible.
I hate to steal a line from a movie, but it can't be impossible can it? A guy today that might have ended up working in a mine like his father just got a little help and what happened, he won the most important golf tournament there is. How many hundreds, thousands, even millions of other folks are there out there like him that could just use a little help?
I really wish our media would ponder shit like this for a few second. What could be! Maybe trying to help out some folks all around the world, starting at home, isn't such a bad idea.