This week, I will be interviewing Olympic Decathlon Gold Medalist Rafer Johnson. In preparation for the interview, I read his autobiography, The Best That I Can Be. His story is filled with reasons why he couldn’t: His father beat him, the sole of his foot had been sliced off, bad weather, high altitude, racial intolerance, bad back, sickness, witnessing a good friend’s assassination. Rafer had a million excuses why he shouldn’t be successful. And yet, to this day he has dreamed big and achieved big. Taking the worse experiences one can imagine and using them to strengthen his inner core. He never let anyone tell him he couldn’t do something. No one would get in his way, even his internal voice.
Back to my interview with him later this week. After reading his book, I feel like that little blue circle on your computer screen when it goes round and round because it’s processing too much at one time. I’ll have 30 minutes to an hour and I can’t decide where I want to take the story. I want to honor a great man, but I especially want to tell people, through his story, how powerful it is to live by his motto. I pray that I will be able to be The Best Writer That I Can Be that day to inspire my readers to emulate his philosophy and be The Best That They Can Be.