Bri­an Lewis

Sport has been one of my most loy­al friends from the age of sev­en years grow­ing up in Bel­mont, play­ing in the nar­row lanes, Bel­mont Boy's RC school yard, the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, through my move from com­pet­i­tive sport to sport ad­min­is­tra­tion and lead­er­ship. We have been in­sep­a­ra­ble.

Ours was a sin­gle par­ent home (moth­er). Sport and the val­ues of sport played an im­por­tant role in my child­hood–sport was a sur­ro­gate fa­ther, a much need­ed source of fun, a teacher of val­ues such as per­se­ver­ance, de­ter­mi­na­tion, dis­ci­pline, in­tegri­ty, fair­play, pas­sion, striv­ing for ex­cel­lence. Sport kept me out of trou­ble. I ex­pe­ri­enced first hand the es­sen­tial role sport can play in the life of a child or teenag­er. I owe sport and its core val­ues a debt of grat­i­tude.

Over the East­er hol­i­days I was able to re­flect and do some read­ing. I re-read Hen­ry David Thore­au's es­say "The Ne­ces­si­ty of Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence" and Ralph Wal­do Emer­son's Self Re­liance. Church ser­vice re­mind­ed me about the life of Je­sus Christ, I browsed books about Nel­son Man­dela, Mar­tin Luther King ju­nior, Moth­er Tere­sa and not for the first time, I have lost count how many pon­dered on 'IF', the po­em by Rud­yard Kipling.

With­in each of us there is a voice that whis­pers, 'take the risks, stand up for what you be­lieve and stay faith­ful to your con­vic­tions. Do what you be­lieve is right."

Then, out­side us are the voic­es that scream. "Don't be a fool, you're go­ing to fail, be like every­one else, if you do what you want you will be self­ish and hurt­ing oth­ers." these voic­es urge us to con­form.

But through­out the his­to­ry of mankind, those who have made a dif­fer­ence have lis­tened to the voic­es and mu­sic they hear in their soul and pro­ceed­ed in­de­pen­dent of the opin­ion of oth­ers. For do­ing so, they are la­belled trou­ble­mak­ers even mis­fits.

Hen­ry David Thore­au was vil­i­fied and thrown in jail.

The drum beat you hear with­in your­self is your con­nec­tion to your soul's pur­pose. It will con­tin­ue to nag you when you ig­nore it in an at­tempt to con­form.

Many of us ig­nore our drum beat and choose to suf­fer in com­fort.

Ralph Wal­do Emer­son said noth­ing is at last sa­cred but the in­tegri­ty of your own mind. He cham­pi­oned ethics over con­for­mi­ty sim­ply to ap­pease so­ci­ety. He made the point that those who don't give pri­or­i­ty to the in­tegri­ty of their own mind will of­ten give good rea­sons why they do what they do.

My in­ner voice whis­pers ho­n­our and live by the core val­ues of sport and the prin­ci­ples of good gov­er­nance and do the right thing not some of the time but every time.

If I took the ad­vice of the great souls such as Je­sus, Man­dela, King, Moth­er Tere­sa, Thore­au and Emer­son, I would be re­mind­ed that the choice to lis­ten to your in­ner voice means that you will in­cur the mis­un­der­stand­ing of those around you. But it is the in­tegri­ty of your own mind that you must first con­sult. In oth­er words you must seek your sense of what is right to for­mu­late your opin­ion.

If as an ex­am­ple you are treat­ed un­just­ly or un­eth­i­cal­ly, that is not an ex­cuse to ig­nore your in­ner truth. If you meet with anger and re­sent­ment, that is not a rea­son to re­act with anger if you're in­ner truth is peace. You will have to seek so­lace in the com­fort of your in­ner strength.

To walk the talk there must be har­mo­ny be­tween the in­tegri­ty of your own mind and your dai­ly con­duct. When words are no longer mak­ing im­pact, be­hav­iour is the most ef­fec­tive way to com­mu­ni­cate.

I end with a ref­er­ence to a line in Rud­yard Kipling's po­em: "If you can fill the un­for­giv­ing minute with six­ty sec­onds worth of dis­tance run.......You'll be a Man my son!"

Bri­an Lewis is the Hon­orary Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Olympic Com­mit­tee http// www.ttoc.org. The views ex­pressed are not those of the TTOC.

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