“Time, time is very precious to me; I don’t know how much I have left, and I have some things I would like to say. Hopefully, at the end, I’ll have something that will be important to other people.”
The 1993 ESPY Awards--a physically fragile Jim Valvano makes his way up to the stage to formally accept the Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award. One year earlier, Valvano, widely known as Jimmy V, had been diagnosed with metastatic adenocarcinoma, a form of bone cancer. His deficiency of time because of this was perhaps the foundation for the most inspiring 11 minutes of his long career, even better than the unfavored 1983 NCAA championship win by his NC State basketball team.
It is only when our lives are struck with evident heartbreak and tragedy that we come to realize the finite nature of time. Before then, we simply run through every day waiting for something better to come, not understanding that something better is this moment; it is now. And nothing solidifies our understanding of this concept of time more so than being inflicted with the misfortune of pending death or death itself.
Jimmy V understood his time, and he understood how to go about using it.
Without notecards and without a teleprompter, he delivered this message to the audience of the 1993 ESPYs: “To me, there are three things we all should do every day... Number one is laugh; you should laugh every day. Number two is think; you should spend some time in thought. And number three is you should have your emotions moved to tears; could be happiness or joy. If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day.”
Fast forwarding 23 years, the V Foundation for Cancer Research has awarded over $130 million to over 120 research facilities throughout the country. Fast forwarding 23 years, Craig Sager has just received the Jim Valvano Award for Perseverance at the 2016 ESPY Awards.
This past Wednesday, Sager slowly made his way to the stage to accept the award from United States Vice President Joe Biden and deliver a speech, similar in thought to the ideas of Valvano's speech 23 years ago: "Time is something that cannot be bought. It cannot be wagered with God. And it is not an endless supply. Time is simply how you live your life."
So why should cancer be granted the power to dictate our time?
It is time to take back the time stolen from our friends, our brothers, our moms, our coaches, from everyone. We need to donate and we need to fight. Foundations such as the V Foundation for Cancer Research need our help to defeat the ticking clock that cancer places around our necks.
It is time to take back our time.
