The NYT Magazine did its annual collection of obituaries, The Lives They Lived, on Sunday. One story in particular struck me, the reminiscence of Darryl Stingley. For a man of my time and place that name carries a certain cautionary connotation. Stingley was a professional football player. He was hit, during a meaningless pre-season game, and broke his neck, causing him to lose the use of his arms and legs for the rest of his life. As the story goes: "...for the first and only time a pro-football player was rendered a quadriplegic on the field."
Doing what he loved, playing the game that defined his life, had brought down terrible misfortune on him. A humbling thought.
But he came to define himself beyond his previous profession. In his disability he became a new man. He forgave the person, Jack Tatum, who had hit him (even though Tatum behaved poorly thereafter) and he found a way to accept his condition and, even, thrive. Indeed, he found salvation in forgiveness:
...He established the Darryl Stingley Youth Foundation, in Chicago, to provide aid to inner-city youth. And the year before that, in May 1992, after taking correspondence courses through cable television for two years, Stingley received his degree from Purdue. One thousand people rose to their feet as his name was announced at the university’s graduation ceremony.
“For me to go on and adapt to a new way of life, I had to forgive him,” Stingley said in 1983. “I couldn’t be productive if my mind was clouded by revenge or animosity.” On the day he received his degree, Stingley elaborated: “I don’t harbor any ill feelings toward him. In my heart I forgave Jack Tatum a long time ago.”
And he was at peace with himself and the world:
Gene Upshaw, the executive director of the N.F.L. Players Association, says, “It was always amazing to me, that final 30 years of his life, that he was able to handle it with such dignity and without any remorse whatsoever.” Upshaw was playing for the Raiders that day and grew close to Stingley in the years afterward. “He really had no bitterness whatsoever,” Upshaw says. “He never talked about it; he accepted where he was. He always made the best of his life.
Makes me think of Chuang Tzu, writing about a man who is facing a disfiguring disease and imminent death but who accepts and transcends his situation. One of the man's friends asks if he is resentful, and he says:
"No, why should I resent it," said Adept Cart. "If my left arm's transformed into a rooster, I'll just go looking for night's end. If my right arm's transformed into a crossbow, I'll just go looking for owls to roast. And if my butt's transformed into a pair of wheels and my spirit's transformed into a horse, I'll just ride away! I'd never need a cart again!"
Darryl Stingley understood that.
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