Lessons from Muhammad Ali

The ‘greatest’ is gone. Muhammad Ali was a hero to many. What lessons can we draw from the legendary pugilist?

Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay had this amazing personal drive that all of us need to unleash the best in us.

Yet he recognized that no training, no hours in gym, workshop, school or whatever we use to mould our talents will achieve much, if it is not grounded deeply in our souls.

He said “Champions aren’t made in gyms. Champions are made from deep inside them, a desire, a dream, and a vision. They have to have the skill, and will.

But they must be stronger than the skill...” How many of us are forcing their children to study things they are not interested in?

How many physicians, lawyers, and accountants are going through the motions in jobs without any conviction?

What about the outcome of youngsters in colleges studying for ‘daddy and mums’ degree?
Ali made an otherwise savage sport look glamorous and ‘cool’.

In an amazing mix, the fighter engaged personal charm, intelligence, panache and a rare gift of the garb in his job.

He employed hype in a maximum psychological warfare that some of his opponents already lost the fight before they entered the ring.

Hear him after mincing George Foreman in the Rumble in the Jungle fight in Kinshasa, 1974 “I’ve wrestled with alligators, I’ve tussled with a whale. I done handcuffed lightning. And throw thunder in jail.

You know I’m bad. Just last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick. I’m so mean, I make medicine sick.”

But bravado and excellence in boxing aside: Mr Ali’s strong personality positively influenced his public life and participation.

He reminded us, like all great people do that our achievements can be employed so powerfully to improve humanity.

He sacrificed his career, fame and titles when he refused conscription for the Vietnam War.

Doing so at a time when black people were still regarded sub-humans incapable of making such radical decisions; this was taken as very daring indeed.

He was stripped off his boxing titles but managed to escape a five year jail term. He refused to back off.

“Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go...drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while the so called Negro people... are treated like dogs and denied basic human rights ...?

“I am not going 10000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of darker people the world over...” he is alleged to have said, adding that he could join the war the following day if it were about the liberation of his black race.

Mercifully, his boxing titles were reinstated in 1970. He went on to dominate the boxing ring till he retired in 1981, only to enter into another personal fight with the Parkinson disease.

This was so poignantly shown the world when in 1996; he was chosen to light the Olympic torch.

And the world watched as the legend’s trembling hand raised the torch to a thundering cheer, focusing a light to a little understood disease.

Despite his larger than life profile, the boxer remained humble.
In public, he was a moral icon in the high league of the likes of Nelson Mandela or Tenzin Gyatso (the current Dalai Lama).

He stood for social justice like Mahatma Gandhi before him. As Fox News stated, he transcended issues in boxing to issues outside boxing.

“I am not fighting for myself. All this fighting is for a higher purpose...” he told the media.

He saw his work and doggedness of purpose as part of wider struggle for the disadvantage, saying he will never be happy earning millions of dollar as long as black youths were ensnared in drugs, poverty and prostitution.

How many of us will emulate this personal sacrifice for the sake of the country?

Many of our leaders say they are fighting for ‘the people’ only to turn against them when they taste the nectar of power.

Which political career, among our cantankerous politicians, is so dyed with the course of Kenyans as Ali’s life was tied to uplifting the black race and the whole humanity?

The great majority of us will never become great sports personalities, or famous. Ali detested radical Islam and its offshoot, terrorism, just as he did racism.

What are you and I doing to fight tribalism, corruption, unfairness and indiscipline or whatever malaise is eating the bone marrow of this country?

Ali was indeed a lay saint. In the next life, Great One, continue to ‘float like a butterfly and sting like a bee.’ RIP.