As you probably know, during the last two weeks one of the biggest stories in the news has been the explosive rise of NBA rookie point guard Jeremy Lin for the New York Knicks. An undrafted player from Harvard University, Lin is the first Taiwanese-American player to ever play in the NBA. On February 4th, Lin made his first career start in a game against the New Jersey Nets, in which he led the Knicks to victory, scoring 25 points! Over the next six games, Lin had additional amazing performances (such as scoring 38 points against the Los Angeles Lakers on February 10th or hitting a game-winning 3-pointer against the Toronto Raptors with less than 1 second remaining in the game on February 14th), leading the Knicks on a 7 game winning streak. "Linsanity" gripped the nation, and Jeremy Lin was heralded as the greatest rookie to ever play the game. Unfortunately, just a few days later, Lin had a bad game in a loss against the Miami Heat, shooting only 1 for 10 from the field. Suddenly, critics were everywhere, saying how overrated Lin was as a player and that he couldn't lead a team to victory (even though he only had one bad game!). Lin hasn't yet had another chance to prove his doubters wrong, due to the annual All-Star break this weekend, during which no regular season games are played.
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Lin's game-winning 3-pointer against the Toronto Raptors. |
Additionally, I think we can apply Jeremy Lin's story to our own lives. One of my dad's favorite quotes goes something like this: "The greatest source of frustration is unmet, unrealistic expectations". For members of the Church (and for anyone striving to live a good life), we sometimes set unrealistic expectations for ourselves to be perfect. Then, when we fall short of meeting these expectations, we become discouraged and give up entirely. Perhaps, just as in the case of Jeremy Lin, we need to be more moderate in the expectations we set for both ourselves and others.
What a great post. You have a real knack for taking pop culture and turning it into an object lesson :)
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