WINNING IS EVERYTHING...

Winning is Living Fully...until the whistle blows!

It’s Football Season again, and winning is everything…especially for final games.

This week’s movie, watched three times for the inspiration... WE ARE MARSHALL. I believe it is destined to become a football classic, and I couldn’t stop the emotions easily overtaking me as I revisited my final season and game that same year, 1970.

The look and feel of the film, perfectly cast, superbly costumed, music exactly as I recall, and team spirit die-hard football players understand.

We Are Marshall is a spirit of loss and winning. It is a story of tragedy and coping with it. It is about life, and playing what is dealt us, but ever seeking to win...until the whistle blows.

Tears in my eyes each time I watched, I recall the feelings I had when I heard the tragedy on the news that night, November 14, 1970. I had played my final football game as a senior at Simi Valley High School; injured, I was carried off the field, to never wear pads again.

The feelings never leave; those of your final game, and what might have been, and what became of the youthful passion, and friends, and expectations.

That night: I saw “pure end zone,” when the hit I didn’t see coming happened. I recall the little voice, (instinct) was to “cut right” toward sidelines, but the goal was so close. I didn’t see the man clipping me from my left as right knee extended and I crumpled in a heap yards from the score. “Should’ve cut to my right,” I remember moaning as I tried to stand. The defensive player from Newbury Park High said, “Hey man. Come on. Get up!” I thought that was generous and pure class act.

Meyers and another team member saw my dilemma and came to bring me off the field. The player from the other side, I hoped might be there was busy… as teams reformed while I limped off. He probably didn’t even know it was me who was injured. Mike Carlisle was a church buddy, but Newbury Park High was his school and all we talked about for weeks was this match of prowess and wits. I wanted back in, begging for my leg to heal. It was gone, and that was it…my final game. And winning?

Little could I know that three years later Mike’s final game would also come so quickly; played out while serving his fellow man in San Salvador. A lot of final games for a lot of friends since, I still play the game of life and wonder… is “winning everything?”

The Marshall coach tells his team just before they board the plane for the flight that would kill them, “Years from now men, people won’t remember ‘how you played the game.’ It’s winning they will remember.”

Winning takes many forms, as the movie points out. Nothing beats actually “high score wins” in a game like football, but I think there were a lot of winners that night for Marshall, and for Simi Valley and Newbury Park High. And it has never left me.

Should’ve cut to the right! Here’s a trailer from the movie. I know you’ll enjoy.

ANGEL of ILFRACOMBE

A little over one year ago I went on a journey to discover the world of James Allen, the 1902 philosopher who wrote the multi-million selling classic, AS A MAN THINKETH. His fifty page book started me on a journey I enjoy today, when my mother gave it to me at age 19 with hopes I would internalize Allen's message. Thank God for good mothers.

Traveling alone, I discovered a world of wonder, and dreams, and innocence, I had only imagined in writing the novel, still in manuscript form that April 2008 day. I climbed Capstone, the hill overlooking Ilfracombe bay in Devon on the Southwest coast of England, at sunrise, and before me was a statue dedicated to the life and death of an innocent child. It was a spiritual moment as I realized the love two parents had for this child, taken so swiftly in a fall upon that hill; thoughts went to her flying away from the troubles of life and I realized how powerful mental imagery and thoughts are.

No lengthy message this week, just on "thought." James Allen climbed this hill before sunrise every day to meditate. Before the work day began he had already decided upon his actions, what he would think, how he would act, love, be. And his thoughts about becoming whatever we desire to be are still read by millions today. We become what we think about, and we can change thoughts at any time. We are really, as Allen put it, "...the sum of our thoughts."

THE BOOK: As a Man Thinketh...In His Heart coming in September for free at our new website: www.powerthink.com.

James Michael Pratt
www.jmpratt.com

RE-MAKING AMERICA

OPENING LINES

"If I were not living this daily 're-making of America' as our new President proudly calls it, I would think all I see and hear was a conspiracy theory; not real. Like waking from a coma to a bad dream, we seem to be living our Founder's worst nightmares in the light of day.

"And I fear a conspiracy is not hidden from us at all, but plied upon a weakened Republic in plain sight; a Republic unable to take many more blows to its foundation dealt by the enemies to the Constitution from within."

These are the "opening lines" to a new novel series -- "THE FOUNDER's CLUB -- soon to be delivered online at my new website www.powerthink.com, now under "re-make" and re-design for "OPEN HOUSE" on Sept. 1st.

Hope you'll look for my emails regarding the newest venture; to deliver novels "online" -- one chapter at a time -- for FREE.

Keeping the faith...

James