The Celebrity I Would Want to Meet

I don’t put much weight in what celebrities do or say. Being famous doesn’t automatically make someone interesting to me, and it certainly doesn’t make someone a person I would want to meet.

Charles Barkley said:

However, if I had to pick one, there is a person I would make an exception for.

As much as I admired his athletic skill and greatness, I wouldn’t want to meet Cassius Clay, Muhammad Ali, because of what he accomplished in the boxing ring. I would want to meet him for who he was as a man.

I would want to sit down with him and talk about his ideals, his beliefs, his way of life, and everything he went through. I would want to understand where his confidence came from, what made him willing to stand up for what he believed in, and how he dealt with the consequences of doing so.

I would want to know what it was like to be Muhammad Ali when the cameras weren’t there.

I would want to know about the man who had to live with the decisions he made, the criticism he received, the things he lost, and eventually the physical challenges that took away some of the abilities that had made him famous.

Most of all, I would want to know how he continued to move forward.

That is what interests me about Ali. Not the championships, not the knockouts, not the fame, and not even the famous quotes. Those are the things everyone already knows.

I would want to know the person behind all of that.

We spend a lot of time admiring what people accomplish, but accomplishments don’t necessarily tell us who someone really is. Sometimes the more important story is what a person believes, what they are willing to stand for, what they endure, and how they handle life when things don’t go their way.

That’s the conversation I would want to have with Muhammad Ali.

Not about how he became a great boxer.

I would want to know how he became the man he was.