Thermodynamic miracles and new beginnings

January 1st, 2007 by Tuffy Posted in football, nfl |

Darrent Williams, 24-year-old cornerback for the Denver Broncos, was shot and killed New Year’s Day around 2 a.m. local time outside a Denver nightclub. I’m afraid I don’t know much about the player and certainly know next-to-nothing about the man. Apparently, he was just the kind of offbeat entertainer and character I like to watch in sporting events; I just told a friend very late last year that I wish there were more characters in sports.

Because I’m a lousy choice to eulogize the man and the player, let me instead ask politely that you consider not turning away from this story. Yes, it’s a black man shot outside a nightclub. Yes, it’s an athlete involved in gun violence. It’s intellectually lazy and emotionally stunted to assume the pattern allows any of us to not care.

Brian Crecente is a writer whose blog work I discovered late this year, so I missed his loss early this year when his 18-year-old niece was murdered by an ex-boyfriend last February. I stopped to consider her life last weekend when he mentioned her death again, taken far too early for far too common reasons. I did the same thing today when I woke to the news of Williams’ death.

I don’t disagree on the need for a strict definition for ‘tragedy’ for the word to have any impact. I don’t truly believe someone’s inability to get into their desired college or their significant other being caught dick-deep in OPP-land counts as a tragedy.

However, I often wonder if the exposure in the last hundred years or so to more legitimate tragedies caused by industrialization and brought to our doorsteps by the accessibility of information should force us to raise the bar on tragedy or accept there’s far more tragedy in the world than humans can possibly cope with.

In Watchmen, Alan Moore posits that each life is a true miracle in its making, lost in the sea of miracles. If this is true, perhaps we drown in a sea of tragedy (and surely the destruction of a miracle is a tragedy) if we stop paddling long enough to consider the immensity of it all.

This is what I think about when a tragedy may have occurred. Man, I’m getting old fast.

As I attempt to sharpen my writing tools and mental acuity through this little slice of vanity, I hope I remember to take a few minutes to consider each story and each person before I speak. I might still be wrong, but that’s a different burden for another day.