H.O.P.E (How Optimistic People ENDURE)!

This is the ARCC of Change with Donzel Leggett, a podcast from the Anti-Racism Commitment Coalition, an organization dedicated to eradicating racism and hate and spreading anti-racism. Listen as Donzel talks about the relevant topics that will inspire you and help build your capability to take action and change the world. Because none of us are doing enough as long as racism still exists. And now, here's your host, Donzel Leggett.

Donzel: Hello and welcome to the first episode of season three of The ARCC of Change with Donzel Leggett. In this episode, I honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And his message of hope by defining it in a new way and explaining how the ARCC vision of building a world free of racism, bigotry, and hate relies on hope, that's H-O-P-E, or how optimistic people endure, by relaying my own personal experience in discussing the NFL playoffs and the miraculous story of DeMar Hamlin. Now let's get started with our show. Welcome to Season 3 of the ARCC of Change with Donzel Leggett. I am Donzel Leggett, your host and founder of the Anti-Racism Commitment Coalition, or ARCC. Our vision at ARCC is to build a racism-free world and a world free of all bigotry and hate. And our mission is to provide inspiration, education, and support for you to transform, practice, and spread anti-racism. This begins with our three-step process of personally transforming yourself to anti-racism. First, erasing your ignorance about racism and hate. Second, educating yourself about anti-racism and anti-hate. And third, building the character and confidence to stand up, speak out, and take action to spread anti-racism and anti-hate and make positive change happen.

Now I want to start season three by first and foremost thanking you, all our listeners. Because you have inspired us to produce 22 episodes over the last two fantastic seasons. Because of your dedication to our show, we have over 2,700 all-time downloads and counting. And we're ready to bring it again in 2023 with more positive energy, great topics, and outstanding guests. So once again, Thank you. Thank you and please keep listening.

Now, this weekend is one of my favorite weekends of the year. It's the NFL playoffs, but it's the divisional round of the NFL playoffs. This usually is the best day of the NFL. The only thing as close as maybe opening day. And, you know, there's eight teams on this weekend that are competing in four games. Two on Saturday and two on Sunday. And historically, this round has produced some of the greatest games in history. That's why everyone, including myself, looks forward to this weekend. If we go back to last year's divisional round, it was an epic battle between Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs. And Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills. Many people who watched that game to this day still believe it was the best game they've ever seen, whether you include this past season or go back 100 years in the NFL's history. There's just so much on the line for these guys, for these players, the coaches. The great teamwork that they're putting on the line. The brotherhood and pride. You can see it. You can see it and you can feel the tension. You can feel the pressure. You can feel the desperation. You can feel the pain. You can feel the exhaustion of these players on this weekend. You can feel it through the television or the streaming service. However you watch. It kind of reminds me when I played. All those feelings. Remind me a little bit when I play. You know, it's funny when I reminisce, I always think first about all the good times, the fun times, like playing in games. That's pretty fun. The great plays I made, oh, that makes me feel good. The games we won, very few, but there were some, and it makes me feel good to think about those. Hanging out with my teammates, that's always great, great memories. They're like brothers. And man, I think, geez, I wish I was still playing. I wish I was going to be out there Saturday and Sunday. But then I quickly start to remember all the hard stuff. Partly because my knees are hurting, my back's hurting, my elbows, my shoulders, my hands, all sorts of things are hurting. But also think of some of the bad stuff before I even got old and got to those kind of injuries. The stuff that wasn't so fun when I was playing. Like losing a lot of games. Unfortunately, we did lose a lot of games. Missing a lot of plays and making mistakes. Film sessions were not fun. Rewinding, rewinding. Donzel, you made a mistake. Donzel, how'd you do that? God dang it, Donzel. Leg it. God dang it. That was not fun. Obviously, even things like having the coaches yell like I just demonstrated, not fun. And scream at me and my teammates, not fun. Seeing my teammates and good friends get hurt. You know, I think down or bad about my injuries and they feel bad, but I really feel bad for some of the injuries I've seen my teammates suffer. And some of them that have suffered even to this day through some of the injuries that they had. You know, even the things that you have to go through first or before you even get to that point of playing in games. Like there's something called three days, three a day practices that a lot of people probably don't know a lot about today because they don't do it anymore. But three days basically consisted of two straight weeks, including weekends. There's no weekends off during three days where you literally practice three times a day. 7 a.m. To like 930 or 10. Get lunch, come back, 12.30 to about 2.30 or 3. Go home and eat. Get a little bit of a rest. Come back at about 6 o'clock, 5.30 or 6. And you're going again. Remember, this is daylight savings time. You can go late in the summer. This will be in the summertime. You can go until 7.30, 8, 8.30, sometimes 9, 9.30. Think about that. You're doing that kind of practice. I'm from Key West, Florida. In Key West. Where it's 95 degrees, like 100% humidity every day of the summer. Then when I went to college, I played at Purdue University in Indiana. Yeah, in the wintertime it can get a little cool, but in the summer, in the middle of those cornfields, oh my God, the heat doesn't go anywhere. And sometimes it can get a little even hotter there. 98 degrees, 100 degrees. And there was conditioning at the end of every practice. So you practice hard for two, two and a half, three hours. And then at the end of those practices, three a day now, there's conditioning. Right? Every one. But the third one, the night practice, when it's nine o'clock, you've had three long practices in 90 plus degree heat. High heat index with the humidity. That third practice, man, that was the hardest to do that conditioning. It was the hardest and it was the longest because they wanted to push ourselves. They wanted to push us and push everyone on the team past our limits as many times as they could. We would alternate between running hills and stadium steps first sometimes. Then 100-yard full sprints. For those who don't know football, 100 yards is the full length of the football field. Then, after like 30 minutes of doing those each, now we're doing what's called suicides. Suicides are where you start on the sideline. The football field is 50 yards wide. You run to the first half hash. That's about 20 yards. And back to the sideline. Then you run to the second hash. Which is about 40 yards, something like that, and back. Then you got to run all the way across the opposite sideline and back. And we would do multiple suicides. Finally, we do what we used to call in high school, we called them gassers. In college, we called them up-downs. And basically here, you run in place, coach blows his whistle, and you have to fall to your chest and pop right back up and then keep jogging in place. These exercises, I'll be kind, were not only hard. They were meant, again, to put us past our limit. Push us and make us uncomfortable. Break us. I saw guys get sick, throw up, see their lunch, their dinner, their breakfast on the ground. I've seen teammates pass out, literally pass out. I've seen teammates collapse into convulsions. But there's no doubt in my mind, I survived. And there's no doubt in my mind that this was one of the most important life lessons regarding endurance that I had in my entire life. Endurance is all about, number one, being able to stand up against anything that comes at you and don't fall, or if you fall, you get back up. It's about having the physical, mental, and emotional fortitude To keep going and keep doing the little mundane things or the painful things you don't want to do, but you just keep doing it. It's the mental, emotional, and physical fortitude to say when you want to throw up, you want to pass out, you want to quit, you just say, I could do one more. I could do one more hill. I could do one more stadium step. I could do one more sprint. I could do one more suicide. I could do one more gasser. That's the endurance that we had to build because the coaches would always tell us. I always thought this statement was so interesting when you think about it. In high school, they say fatigue makes a coward of the toughest man. No matter how tough you think you are, you want to be a man? Fatigue will make the toughest. Will bring the coward out of you. Well, then when I went to college, that'd be a little bit more politically correct. I guess you consider that as close to inclusiveness as football coaches were in the 1980s. They would then change the statement to say, fatigue makes a coward of us all. If you can overcome fatigue by building your endurance, you can withstand anything. It sounds strange, but it's absolutely on point. It's not about who is courageous when the game starts, but who still has courage and the wherewithal to continue at the end of the game.

The end of the season, when it feels like you're losing, when you've already lost a bunch of games, when you have been hit, what they call hit in your mouth, pushed to compete and run against men that are your size or in many cases bigger, stronger, and faster than you. I'm 6'5". Back then, I was 6'5". I played between 225 pounds as a freshman up to 245 pounds as a junior. I played defensive end, and I played against offensive tackles. Offensive tackles, the guys I played against, averaged 6'5", 310 pounds. But many of them were much bigger. 6'7", 330, 6'6", 350 pounds. So when you get hit in the mouth by somebody much bigger, much stronger, faster, you knock down over and over again. When you're hurt, you're bleeding. And most of all, you're tired. Not just tired. But like they said in the gridiron, dog tired. Exhausted physically, mentally, and emotionally. Only those... Who put in the work and pushed themselves to their limits to make sure they were beyond well-conditioned. And continued to keep doing those suicides, doing those gassers, doing one more sprint when others quit. Who stayed focused on the prize, whether that prize in their mind was to make the team or to be a starter or to be all-conference or all-American. Or to just be part of a winning team. Or just simply to make their parents proud. Or even more importantly to make themselves proud. To prove that they belonged. And capture that optimism from that inspiration to inspire themselves.

When things are tough and all seems lost and fatigue starts to allow cowardice and the thought of quitting to enter their mind, only those who can summon the energy and optimism to give everything they can just one more time. Those are the ones who will endure. I've taken that lesson with me through the rest of my life.

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Donzel: That lesson that I kept with me the rest of my life, that helped shape my life, was how optimistic people endure. I thought about this on Monday when the nation celebrated another Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday. As always, there's lots of positive energy and sayings of Dr. King's quotes all over the news. There's even TV shows. Of course, there's breakfast, luncheons in different communities. There's dinners. There's events, speeches, volunteer efforts, etc., etc., etc. As always, there's lots of optimism on this one Monday for everyone to feel like they're making a difference. For everyone to feel good about themselves.

But what about Tuesday? What about Wednesday? What about next month? What about six months from now? Will this optimism endure?

When Dr. King Day is over and the reality sets back in about the real problems, the real division, the real hate that still exists, will people have the endurance to keep up the fight to make a real difference? Because just like the lesson I learned in football, fatigue makes cowards of us all. Fighting for the dream of racial justice, equality and equity for all. And an end to racism, bigotry and hate for all. It's not a one play thing. It's not a one incident thing. It's not a one game thing. Or even a one day battle. It is a long, drawn out process of transformation spanning generations. Dr. King said the ARCC of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. He knew that the fight to achieve his dream would far outlive him. He said, I may not get there with you. He understood the dream was bigger than him and that this would require everyone to work.

Push to fight over a long, long, long period of time with the optimism and endurance to keep moving forward. Not be satisfied when just little progress is made. Even when big progress is made, if we still have more work to do and we're not at our destination. Dr. King said we got to keep moving forward. If you can't fly, then run. If you can't run, then walk. If you can't walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward. That sounds like endurance to me. Like in football, you have to train yourself by putting in the work and pushing yourself to be uncomfortable. Doing suicides, doing up-downs, running stadium steps, continuing when others want to quit, finding a way to do one more rep, one more sprint, one more up-down, one more suicide. In the case of social justice, having one more tough conversation. Doing a little more research. Finding every way you can to dedicate just another minute, another hour, another day to making progress and keeping moving forward. But unlike football, sometimes it's hard to keep that optimism of achieving that dream, the objective or the prize of creating a world free of racism, bigotry and hate. Because, man, it seems so far away at times. Oh, man, I know that. It feels so far away and hard at times. It feels sometimes like you're running on a treadmill where you're running as fast as you can and you don't get any work. Or that you're stuck in quicksand. The more you try to do stuff, the more you sink. Or simply that we're moving backwards. Even with all the progress we've made, the 55 years since Dr. King was taken from us, there's still so many inequities that have not been improved much at all. And the saddest part is that outside of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, It appears that many people just don't care. What's the use? What difference can I really make? I'm only one person. I can't make a difference. This is impossible. At least in the NFL, every team starts the year with the dream of winning the Super Bowl. All 32 teams have that chance. Well, on paper they do, but there's been 56 Super Bowls. Believe it or not, only 20 franchises have actually won the Super Bowl. And six franchises have won more than half. 30. 30 of the 56 have been won by only six franchises. But all 32 franchises every year believe they have an equal chance to win it all. Even though the odds aren't great when you look at it in reality and look at it historically. But every year, there's renewed hope for all 32 teams. And you best believe they care and their fans care. And as soon as their season's over, without winning a Super Bowl, they're already talking about next year. Even the teams that barely won a game. The teams that finished last in the divisions, including the teams that just lost in the playoffs last weekend, no matter how they finished, man, when their season's over, what about next year? They're keeping their hope alive. This weekend, eight teams still have that hope for this year. And they have trained on their own, players, all offseason long. They then went through two months of training camp. Now, it's not like the old three days that I talked about, but it's still training camp away from their families, full days of nothing but football. It's still grueling physically, even more so now mentally and emotionally because, again, they're away from their families, sequestered. They then played 17 regular season games and a playoff game for a total of 18 games.

Of the most physically, mentally, and emotionally demanding sport in America, probably the world. They put in the work and pushed themselves past being uncomfortable, continued when others would have quit, found ways to do one more rep, sprint, one more film session to make the injuries and the pain that they feel, the mental and emotional stress that they have To deal with all of that. Across an entire season. To get to this point. Where they know if they could just do one more thing. Make one more play. Give a little more effort. To help the team win three more games. They're Super Bowl champions. One of only 57 other teams. In history. To have accomplished that. Even with all that training to get to this point, it is the optimism of the chance to be Super Bowl champions that helps inspire their endurance to overcome the fatigue that spawns that cowardice to quit, that cowardice to give up. Unfortunately, there's no Super Bowl for me. The societal work of eradicating racism and hate and fighting for racial and social justice and equality. There's no immediate reward or gratification of having the Super Bowl trophy raised with confetti flying and thousands of fans cheering. But to consistently do this work, to keep moving it forward. We need some kind of a spark of optimism to inspire our endurance, to help us overcome the fatigue of doing so much for what it seems feels like so little progress at times, trying to break through and appeal to everyone in this country that's so deeply divided along so many different vectors. It can feel impossible.

Well, I think back. Just a few weeks ago. To an NFL game between two teams. Who we knew would be playing in the playoffs in a few weeks. And they actually are playing tomorrow. Or excuse me, this weekend in the playoffs. It was a Monday night football game. January 2nd, 2023. The visiting Buffalo Bills. Against the home standing Cincinnati Bengals. Two of the very best teams in the league.

In one of the most anticipated games of the year.

I was visiting my brother in Orlando, enjoying the New Year's with him and his family. My wife and I were in Orlando to attend the Citrus Bowl, in which Purdue was playing. They got destroyed. It was a very painful day that tested my endurance and my optimism, I have to tell you. But after the game, We decided to go get something to eat and watch the Buffalo Bills-Bengals game. Watch part of the restaurant and the rest when we got back. Took my brother and his family out. It was awesome. It was my brother's birthday. It had just occurred, so it was kind of a late birthday dinner. His wife, my sister-in-law, wonderful cook. She made conch fritters. If you don't know what conch fritters are, they're a Key West specialty, Bohemian specialty. Fantastic. And hers were awesome. So I said, you know what, for all that work, let's go to a really nice seafood restaurant of their choosing. My nephew's a foodie. He came up with the place. Awesome place. Beautiful place. Sat down to eat. Having some oysters. Having some drinks. Game starts. And I can see it on the TV. My brother and my nephew, they're back to the TV, but I can see it. And I saw the quarterback.

For the Cincinnati Bengals, Joe Burrow completed a pass right over the middle and the DB for the Bills makes a routine tackle. I thought everything was fine. I was just eating, not paying attention. I looked up and I saw this player fall. And I didn't think anything of it. We've seen players get hurt before. But then just a few seconds later, I looked up again and I see Buffalo Bills players crying. Grown men with braids and tattoos, crew cuts, 300 pounders, middle-aged men, some of the coaches were crying, players from 20 years old up to 35 and coaches all crying and they were despondent. They were hysterical. Some were jumping around. I told my brother, man, something's going on on this game. These players, they're hysterical. We couldn't figure out what was going on. We finished our meal. We went home and it was silent in the car. We got to my brother's house. We immediately turned the television and watched what was happening. We saw Sean McDermott, the Buffalo bills head coach. We saw him crying, upset, talking about everything and the entire team was all about DeMar and that his team refused to keep playing. They were not going to play. The coach of the Cincinnati Bengals agreed. All the players came out to the center of the field as one group, all concerned, all upset. You could see the hurt, the despondency on all of their faces. Later, We found out that DeMar had, his name was DeMar Hamlin, the player number three for the Buffalo Bills. We found that DeMar Hamlin's heart had stopped on the field. Paramedics had to revive him on the field, restore his heartbeat. He never gained consciousness on the field. They then transferred him to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center where they lost his heartbeat again and restored it. Bengals fans. Remember, they were playing in Cincinnati. Cincinnati Bengals fans went to the hospital and stood outside the hospital. With a vigil for DeMar Hamlin that night. And for the next several days, it seemed like the entire country was had stopped everything and were simply paying attention and were concerned about DeMar Hamlin. His name became known across the entire country. Not just sports. CNN, MSNBC, all of them were reporting on what happened to DeMar Hamlin on January 2nd. And they continued to give updates on January 3rd and 4th. People of all walks of life, from different sides of the aisle, whether you want to say from red states, blue states, whatever you want to call it, that red or blue, you want to call it men or women, people who don't like football, don't care for the NFL, people of different ethnic backgrounds, LGBTQ, cisgender, everyone paid attention and cared and prayed for for DeMar Hamlin to be okay. DeMar's charity, Toy Drive, he had set a goal of $2,500. It's now over $8.5 million of people donating, players from other teams in his team, teams themselves, fans all over the country and world. It's clear that when we want to come together, when we want to overcome our differences, we can do it. DeMar Hamlin showed that. DeMar Hamlin enabled that. Everyone rallied around this young black professional athlete with braids in his hair. Everybody. Contrast that to what you saw with George Floyd and what you saw on January 6th. This is how optimistic people endure. Maintaining hope and believing that under the right circumstances, we can create a movement that unifies all.

My wife and I visited Washington, D.C. Over the summer. We made a point to go to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. And for the first time, we had never been there. It was an awesome experience. If you haven't been, it's a granite shape of a granite mountain, if you want to call it that, with trees. The center, there's a center segment that's broken out and kind of pushed forward. And this center segment has engraved Dr. King's image emerging from that part of the stone with a statement that says, out of a mountain of despair, a stone of hope. H-O-P-E. How optimistic people endure. Believe and be optimistic about change. And you will help hope endure. Never lose faith. Never lose sight of this. This is how optimistic people endure at ARCC. We know that if we put in the work and push ourselves to be uncomfortable, continue when others quit, find a way to do one more thing to make progress every single day, stand up, speak out, and take action, and not just keep moving forward to do one more thing, but to have one more conversation, tough conversation. Try to transform one more person, your brother, your sister, your mom, your friend. Volunteer one more hour of your time. Read one more book and pass it on to the next person, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We will endure and we will ultimately eradicate racism and hate. And we have the optimism that if one person, DeMar Hamlin, and DeMar Hamlin, We're so thankful that you recovered. He has now checked out of the hospital. He's visited his teammates. He may be on the sidelines with his team this weekend. We're so happy for him and proud of the way he has embraced this moment. But if that one person like DeMar Hamlin can stop this country in its tracks and get everyone to come together behind one just cause, leaving their division behind, leaving their hate behind, even for just one week, then we win. Each of us as individuals working together as a collective can eradicate racism. We can eradicate hate one person at a time, one network at a time, and we can do the impossible and create a world free of racism and hate. This is hope. This is H-O-P-E. This is how optimistic people endure.

To find the ARCC of Change podcast with Donzel Leggett and learn more about the Anti-Racism Commitment Coalition or ARCC, please visit us at joinarcc.org. You can also subscribe to the ARCC of Change with Donzel Leggett on your favorite podcast hosting sites.

I greatly look forward to our next episode, an opportunity to inspire you to become part of the movement that will change the world by eradicating racism once and for all. Until next time, stay safe and continue to ask yourself, am I doing enough? And remember that none of us are doing enough as long as racism and hate still exist.

The ARCC of Change podcast with Donzel Leggett is brought to you by the Anti-Racism Commitment Coalition. To learn more about ARCC, donate to our cause and join the coalition, visit joinarcc.org.

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