It seems like once a year there is somebody in sports that inspires people on a global stage. They are not the biggest, they are not the tallest, and they are not the strongest. Sometimes it is the people who are the smallest, but have the greatest hearts that inspire people the most.
Lacey Holsworth, an 8-year-old cancer patient who took the sports world by storm with her admiration for Michigan State forward Adreian Payne, died last week from complications of neuroblastoma, a fatal cell cancer. However, as the saying goes, sometimes it is not where the road ends, but the journey it took to get to that end. What does a little girl in Michigan have anything to do with Pierce College? Everything and nothing.
She was not a Brahma and probably never set foot in the San Fernando Valley, but what she has to do with the Brahmas is that Brahmas are rare people. It is a saying that goes without question and personifies the hardship that each and every one of us has to go through on a daily basis.
Often times we look into our lives and we see the struggle. We see that there are only two months of class left and you’re trying to figure out how to pass that math class. The stress at work, the student/parent who works over 30 hours a week. Yet all these things combined could never amount to the kind of pain this little girl went through on a daily basis. But during her times of pain, the little girl who inspired not just Michigan State Spartan fans but college basketball fans around the world, kept her poise.
If there is one thing that we could do to help better ourselves as human beings, just think of Lacey. Think of that twinkly-eyed eight-year-old who in the face of death and tragedy, helped put a smile on the faces of college basketball fans around the world. Life may be tough, but instead of worrying or feeling sorry for what you have, just be thankful. Be thankful that you don’t have to deal with the pain of cancer or not knowing whether or not you’ll live to see another day.
No, she was not a Brahma, but the life that she lived in her short eight years was something special. Not a lot of people around the world are going to remember who won the National Championship in 2014, but they will remember Lacey. They will remember the feeling they got every time she spoke, smiled on camera or stood next to her hero Adreian Payne. Hopefully everyone at Pierce will remember her and use her as an inspiration to be happy, be thankful and make the world a better place.
