Champions In Life

On this today’s morning show, Derek Hough called his dancing partner for all these weeks on Dancing With The Stars, "a champion in life.” Her name is Maria Menounos and she and Derek obtained two perfect scores of thirty each. However, combined with the judge’s scores and the voting public, they were taken off last night. This goes to show that anybody who knows anything or perhaps nothing about ballroom dancing should not be able to count for total scores. The public votes on who looks sexy or good or who is popular in the activities they do off the show. The voting should be left up to real professionals who understand the rules and the voting and the accomplishments of the dancers. The public is all a popularity contest as who do you like better, not who is the most qualified.

He called her a champion in life and that is something we can all subscribe to becoming in one thing we do in our life at some time. It can be anything; you could be a champion in sewing. I knew a girl in high school who was a champion sewer. She made all her own clothes and for others too and went on in her adult life to teach sewing classes at a senior center and also made designer clothes for well to do people. I knew a lady who taught piano and voice to teenagers at a recreation center and she herself was a sought after vocalist. There are people who are teachers at elementary schools, who inspire little kids to excel in their studies. There are professors in colleges who inspire adults and teens to excel. I had one of them in 1968 that inspired me to go on as an adult of thirty-three years and I credit him, Dr.Z.John Levay now deceased, with much of my success being a writer now at senior age and for my amateur dancing activities. His words to me that I could do better have been a mainstay of my adult life.

I know of people who are champions in life because they volunteer at different centers to help older people accomplish things on their own by teaching them some senior skills. I am acquainted with people who give of their leisure time to take senior and incapacitated folks to doctors’ appointments and get no remuneration for their gasoline costs. They do it as one woman told me “because someone helped her mom late in life, to be transported to various doctors”, so now she pays back and does it for others.

There are many others who are the opposite. I know of a young man who when you look at his tattooed arms and hands, you would not realize what a gentle giant he is. He works in a medical facility and got let go because his mom came there and had to go to the hospital emergency room afterwards and he with permission of the doctor on duty, left to accompany his mom and dad to Sinai Hospital. He was a giving and loving son and because he cared for his mom, he was terminated or had his hours cut out as they said. However, he has another and better job and he is a champion in life because he cared about his parents. That is something to be proud of and his name is David. His employer is the opposite, he is not a champion in life, because he let go a man who was a champion.

Marge and Gower Champion had the champion name because they were truly dancers supreme in the early fifties because of their talent in dancing and choreographing for movies. Champion is an interesting last name and they deserved it for all of their dance happenings.

Anyone of us can be a champion in anything we do. We can be helpful, kind and compassionate to our elderly parents, to our children, to our spouses, to our friends. A champion does not have to earn a blue ribbon, a trophy, a certificate. A champion in life as Derek said about Maria, is a decent, delightful, doing, and devoted person to a cause or a human being. Derek said Maria participated in a “dance of life.”

Life can be a dance, a dance of movement to assist others, a few moments of giving someone a great time by taking some homebound persons a basket of goodies that they cannot get for themselves; a conversation on the phone some days to help a lonely soul pass the time with good thoughts, a visit of even an hour to someone who cannot get about too often, even in these modern times, a sweet email of a joke, a saying or a magazine you brought them. Even a box of sweet desserts to someone who can no longer bake for herself or shop to buy sweet things. Also, if you can drive someone to a supermarket and let them have the pleasure of picking out the food supplies, makes you a champion in life to yourself or to the recipient.

Sometimes when I am feeling a bit modest, I think that maybe I am a champion in writing, of all these encouraging articles to inspire everyone to ballroom dance, to be a champion of sorts in something and most of all to keep the flow of reassuring words, on what they are capable of doing now at any age.

A shot in the arm to spur the thoughts of how much we can help others in some way, in any way, at this time in our life makes us champions in life for sure. That is being an advocate of goodness and we can be proud of our living this way.Nayana Davis, the editor of Cockeysville.Patch.com is indeed herself, a young champion in life. She edits the Patch and puts in articles about fine things people accomplish in the Cockeysville community and also other areas. She appreciates my stories on life when I was a young teen, as an adult and now as a senior. She certainly ‘champions life as she sees it from her vantage point as a young woman.’ Bravo to all of you champions in life out there. You all know who you are.