"I Want To Thank My Psychiatrist"

In perhaps the greatest post-match interview ever, Ron Artest said the above words. This isn't exactly hot off the press but it occured to me its worth paying attention to.

I hope one day the world will advance to a point in social consciousness where we drop the pretence and admit that everybody has problems and nobody has answers. Not universal answers anyway. Our emotions and even reasoning are complex. Our motivations often opaque.

Consider Basketball, objectively meaningless. 10 guys running around on a court obsessed with putting a rubber ball through a hoop with a net attached. Why can Ron Artest get stressed out about games of no consequence? Kim Jong Il is not going to live or die based on whether Ron Artest can sink a 3 late in Game 7. Chinese Democracy is not going to be achieved when Yao Ming makes it past the first playoff round.

It's just a game, that becomes a career, that is picked apart with fine toothed combs by legions of journalists who have a career based on said game and feel obligated to offer opinions about other peoples mental resilience, talent dedication etc.

And its so easy to lose sight of the fact that its just a game.

So to me Ron Artest is a hero, not for treating the NBA Finals like any other game, but for being man enough to admit the media was getting to him, that he was losing his mental resolve and seeking help. He's doubly a hero for being so publicly open about it, joyous even. And he should be, he did some good shit.

I don't know how many people I've met on the basketball court that are in need of some serious head doctoring, but it may be as high as one in twenty have completely lost sight of the love of the game. I'm talking about shitty Iverson wannabe point guards that get inordinately angry that myself or pretty much any fat jerk can block their way to the rim every time and patently refuse to pass first to one of their teammates. These guys need their head checked, and we are talking the lowest incarnation of Basketball.

Peeps everywhere need their headchecked, not just in extreme cases, but because there is a long list of things that effect our moods and wellbeing we have been subconsciously trained not to talk about.

So I want to thank Ron Artests psychiatrist too.