it was a lie.

the biggest, most comprehensive lie ever to find its way into the hearts and minds of america’s youth, and we bought it, hook, line, and sinker

despite however hard i might have worked or how dedicated to the game i might have been, i never would have been like mike.

never.

ever.

even if i reached my basketball best, completely exhausting my basketball potential, his basketball best would have still been light years better than mine. this isn’t my fault, though. we are all born with certain limitations, and there’s no shame in admitting that.

much of who we are and what we’re able to accomplish is decided before we’re even born. i was a pretty good athlete, good enough to earn a full scholarship to college, but my full athletic capacity still greatly pales in comparison to someone like a lebron james or mike vick…people born with athletic gifts that i never had any chance of ever having. this actuality isnt just limited to athletics. sh*t, i think i’m pretty smart, but all the studying in the world still wouldn’t have made me on par with stephen hawking.

i’m bringing this up because this factor ties directly into yesterdays conversation. it’s no secret that men and women generally have different standards of what is and isn’t attractive. if you break it down across culture and timelines to its most primal form, you’ll find that women are traditionally attracted to power and status (two characteristics which suggest virility) while men are generally attracted to youth and softness (two characterisitics which suggest fertility).

obviously, our current tastes are much more nuanced than this, but you’ll find that those base characteristics are usually the latent foundation for what we look for in a romantic mate, a situation which is undeniably tilted to man’s favor.

the reason why many women remain “intentionally clueless about what men find attractive” is because the hard truth, the fact that much of what men consider when choosing a mate has nothing to do with anything she can do and everything to do with good genes, is a bit too difficult to swallow.

right or wrong, we generally place more of a premium on physical attractiveness than women do, a fact which is largely out of our control, and this “lack of control” greatly contributes to the innate schizophrenicness synonymous with womenkind.

this phenomenon is responsible for the frustration many women feel when learning that their degrees and accomplishments haven’t done as much to enhance their attractability as they thought they would, the “intentional cluelessness” i mentioned before, and the full fledged argument i had with an ex a few years ago who couldn’t fathom how the hell i found esther baxter more physically appealing than jada pinkett-smith. (her argument: “she dresses better!!! and she looks like she tells funny jokes!!! how could you not choose her??? you obviously arent the man i thought you were!!!”)

now, i’m not implying that women who havent been blessed with the best genetic stock need to just roll over and die, lol. there are many factors to consider when choosing a romantic mate, and i’d advise anybody, male or female, to do what they can to enhance what they have.

i do admit though, that women have it tougher than us in this regard.  not only does a man typically have much more of an opportunity to “upgrade” his overall stock, we’re expected to.

what does this all mean? who knows.

all i know is that i still wanna be like mike.

–the champ