What is greatness? A KXC tribute


“Running to him was real. The way he did it, the realest thing he knew. It was all joy and woe, hard as diamond. It made him weary beyond comprehension, but it also made him free.”

- John L. Parker, Once A Runner
So I’ve been thinking about this post for a while, but never really solidified what to write.

I recently finished Bill Simmons’ The Book of Basketball. Simmons is an ESPN columnist called the Sports Guy, a Boston-bred sports fanatic that religiously breaks down sports and pop culture. I think he is the funniest person alive.


I loved the book, and definitely suggest it to any sports fan. I think it’s a must-read for any basketball fan since he takes being a basketball fan to a whole new level. He breaks down the best teams and the best players of all-time, including a 96 player pyramid ranking.


The most important thing the book made me think of was something I think about all the time. The topic of greatness. In his 96 player ranking, Simmons analyzes exactly what made a player great. He highlights players that introduced dunking, players who revolutionized the point guard position, players that had unstoppable shots, and so on.


Of all 96 players that Simmons breaks down, the player that stood out to me the most was No. 72, Chris Webber.


Webber entered the league labeled as a sure-fire hall of famer, and he lived up to it.

Kind of.

He was a great player, but he was only ever good enough to finish at 72. He was hurt a lot, which isn’t entirely his fault. He never won any titles, so he’s accused of not always showing up when it counted, but that can be attributed to the quality of his teammates. He had the potential to be better, but it isn’t really his fault that scouts overrated him. All that said, here’s Simmons’ conclusion:
“So yeah, Webber finished no. 72. But he still goes to sleep every night knowing he could have been forty or fifty spots higher. And if he doesn’t think about it, then that explains everything.”

This made me think about my own experience in sports. I ran cross country and track for seven years of my life, and I can think of one or two runners that I would say were truly great athletes. I’m thinking of one teammate in particular, my former roommate Jim Boston.


Those of you reading this that had the good fortune of running with Jim are probably nodding along in agreement.


First off, Jim was consistently the fastest runner on our team, so he had the talent. But there was more. Jim was the sort of the runner that Simmons would rave about. The kind that obsesses over greatness. The kind that loses sleep because he knows he could run just a little bit faster. The kind that makes unreasonable sacrifices for greatness.

He was the kind of runner that John L. Parker writes about in the epic novel Once A Runner. I saw Jim as the kind of person that found life and meaning in the suffering involved in the quest for greatness. That’s what I always admired about Jim.


Of all the lessons of greatness I could graft from sports, I think this is my favorite. To be great, maybe you have to be obsessed. You have to care, not just more than everyone else, but more than other people can imagine. You have to be the kind of person, that years later, we still remember how they cared a little too much. You have to have such a life, that it might be filled with exhaustion and struggles, but you couldn't imagine living any other life.


I believe that in a world filled with Chris Webbers and Jim Bostons, I'm in the foxhole with Jim Boston every time.


from ken


Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

No one laughs at God in a hospital



This is a double Book Review for Here If You Need Me by Kate Braestrup and Love Wins by Rob Bell AND a theological debate.

Here If You Need Me is an easy to read and laughable memoir about a minister that serves search-and-rescue workers. I highly suggest this book. Braestrup has an incredible story of encountering religion on the frontlines of life and death.

Love Wins
is the latest by New York Times Bestselling author Rob Bell. He discusses the confusing co-existence of an all-loving God with suffering. It raises some interesting conversation points, but it’s kind of scattered. I feel like he was pushed to get this book out to make some cash. Not highly recommended.


Sidenote: I’m on a quest to read 50 books during the calendar year, and I recently finished books 18 and 19. I usually read 5 – 10 books at a time, a product of modern day attention spans, so I’ll occasionally have awesome weeks when I finish a ton of books at once, and I’m in the middle of such a week now.

Anyways, it was interesting to read these books at the same time. Both the books apexed to the same major point.

In one story from Here If You Need Me, Braestrup writes about a day when she accompanied the wardens as they searched through snowy woods and freezing cold lakes for a missing five year old, only to find the missing victim under a thick sheet of ice. The girl was long dead and there was nothing they could do for the family.

This raises the question, and the major point from both books. In any god believing paradigm, how can a god be just, and stand by as five year old girls drown to their deaths? How can gods allow war? Why does suffering exist?

Braestrup suggests that this question, “Why does evil exist?,” is the ultimate theological question.

The answer she gives, is by far the best answer I have come across (slightly paraphrased):

“I am willing to have that theological conversation with a cop, any cop – faithful or faithfree, not because he arrives at my answer, but because he has had to look suffering right in the face. Whatever words he uses for God, he is still the one who had to take the little girl’s body out of the water and see her face and hear her mother crying.

Here is my answer: that cop took the child out from under the ice with his own hands, tried to give her his own breath, and his own heart broke when he could not save her life. He is the answer.”

I believe church is a valuable component to life. A lot of my friends now come from church, and it’s a great place for community, but I think religion/spirituality/God/etc, is found outside of Sunday. This is why I believe God has been walking with me long before I became a Christian a few years ago. This is why I believe God walks with lots of people that wouldn’t be caught dead in a church.

I guess I wasn’t able to answer why a just God would allow five year old daughters to drown. But I will say that God works despite five year old daughters drowning.

I believe God exists in the rescue workers, who hold no conception of working overtime, who are out there in the bitterly cold Maine winters searching for lost five year old daughters.

I believe God exists in teachers forgoing fancy schools and big paychecks to work with disadvantaged youth.

I believe God exists in hospitals where nurses look after patients and scientists hope to find cures to uncontrollable cancers.

I believe God exists in a good friend that will sacrifice their free time to help another friend.


Anyways, I’d love to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this.

from ken

Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com

Stages of Life


I touched ground in PDX on May 27th, 2010. That means I’ve officially been here for twelve whole months. If that sounds familiar it’s because I started the “I’ve been here for 6 months” post with the same sentence. Congrats on noticing! This post may or may not be similar.


Anyways, I recently decided that a year is a good unit of time to label as a stage, so I labeled my last year as: the stage Ken goes off into the wilderness to pray/think/meditate/write.


The last four years of my life I was in college, so I was basically surrounded with people non-stop. Going from roommates, to classes, to the dining hall, to the study lounge, to track practice, even as an introvert I couldn’t avoid being with people all the time.


The biggest difference in my life since then is that it’s a lot more solitary. Since I didn’t know anyone living in Portland, I chose to live in a studio. On top of that, I thought I would save some money and live sans TV and internet. And surprisingly, or maybe not, the alone time has been life-changing.


With no roommates, constant community, or distractions like ESPN or gmail chat I’ve had a lot more time to analyze my life to an unnecessary level, and read more books than ever before.


Sidenote: here are the top 5 books I’ve read in the last 12 months in the order I’d suggest them:


1) The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho – Super heart-warming and inspiring, you could read it in a day.

2) The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie – A novel written from the perspective of a teenager growing up on the reservation but going to a white school.

3) Bird by Bird by Anne Lammott – Readable book about writing and being honest with yourself.

4) The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons – Absolutely hilarious, breaks down the history of the NBA, would be #1 by a moonshot but it’s about 800 pgs long.

5) The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown – Self-help/addiction recovery book about accepting your flaws.


But of course, the practical question: has all that alone time really changed anything?


I think my set of beliefs is about the same as it’s ever been in my adult life. Some mix of: serve people, follow your dreams, relationships are the point of life, and work hard. I would say the biggest intangible I’ve developed is the ability to be honest with myself and allow myself to be guided by my internal GPS.


I’ve used this newfound ability to debunk old life goals I had for myself, be the next Paul Farmer (global health icon), and replaced them with new ones, be the next Atul Gawande (surgeon and NYT best-selling author) or Siddhartha Mukherjee (physcian-scientist and Pulitzer Prize winner). I decided this based on a key realization: my new favorite stress-relieving activity, showering, is hard to come by in a doctors-without-borders setting.


Sidenote: I thought my all-time favorite showering setting would be post-practice locker room showering with ten other distance runners, but I’ve actually taken a liking to the peace of showering by myself.


I’ve also used this newfound ability to change how I behave now. I’ve learned that I don’t need to transform myself into a socialite to cultivate community. I can be the same awkward introvert I’ve always been and still contribute in my own niche way.


So I guess what I’ve learned can be summed up as: you do what you can.


Top 3 predictions for next stage of life:

1) Ken moves to Texas, buys a Texas flag, loves irrationally talking about how awesome Texas is

2) Ken moves to California, learns to surf, becomes a beach bum/scientist

3) Ken changes his mind about life, again


from ken


Are you thinking about something? Write about it and post it here! Email me! ken.e.noguchi@gmail.com