That you are inadequate?
Heading into “March Madness”, there’s no better time to (re)watch Coach Carter, but it got me thinking about one of the film’s central ideas: fear.
First of all, I can’t believe this film is nearly 20 years old goddamn!
There’s a question which high school basketball coach Ken Carter asks one of his players, Timo Cruz, on a number of occasions – What is your deepest fear? – to which Timo doesn’t really have an answer for until towards the end of the film where he recites a poem by Marianne Williamson in a rather eloquent manner. The whole scene is quite moving including what led up to it and is probably one of the most clipped parts of the movie.
However, I’m not here to do a film analysis, so let’s move on shall we?
I am here to do a poem of my own.
What is your deepest fear, young man?
That you are inadequate?
Forgettable,
Like a seven-footer who can’t dunk
A bona fide scrub
An unremarkable punk
Consigned to the pages of history,
But written in invisible ink
Put in with the foundations yet,
An ol factory stink
Shot down in a blaze of glory
It’s laughable you’d get paid to think
Deep fears
Into the abyss, headfirst
Mariana trench
Unable to quench your thirst
Lost, left to rot for a long time
Just imagine the stench
Give up, go home
You’re not going to win
You’re not built for success
The deck is stacked against you
Sometimes you get kicked!
In excess
“Your playing small doesn’t serve the world”
And yet we have to
To appease the insecure and immature
And way down we go
Why can’t we fertilise with a different manure?
In a race to the bottom does humanity row
Lost in the desert
Dunes are the mind-killer
An oasis of logic and reason
To a mad man’s rants and indecipherable filler
Is it all completely hopeless?
What a waste of time life is meaningless
A society bent on safety and security
Won’t allow fears to be liberated
It’s bad for business
A fearful populace
Easier to manipulate and control
Psychologically ‘twill take its toll
A managed reality
Being told to forget what we know
Turning away from stupidity
Before it’s nuclear winter in the snow
How long? Not far…
‘Til we forget who we are