This powerful speech will get you through deployment Groundhog Day
SUMMARY
In 1992, Jim Valvano – a former basketball player, coach of the 1983 champion North Carolina State men's basketball team, and broadcasting personality – was diagnosed with metastatic cancer that had spread to his spine.
Up until this point, the charismatic Queens, N.Y.-native was best known for his celebration after defeating the Houston Cougars in the 1983 NCAA championship game. You can see "Jimmy V" running onto the court about 9 seconds into the video below:
"Time is very precious to me. I don't know how much I have left and I have some things that I would like to say. Hopefully, at the end, I will have said something that will be important to other people, too."
It was just a decade later that his life was tragically cut short. But before he went, even knowing the end could be near, he was able to accept the Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award at the first annual ESPY Awards. It was a speech that echoed for years to come and remains one of the most memorable.
Those are words appropriate for fighting cancer, being the underdog in the country's biggest basketball tournament, or even fighting alongside your brothers and sisters in arms, far from your family and loved ones.
"To me, there are three things we all should do every day... Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy... think about it: If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that's a full day. That's a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you're going to have something special."
But about a week or so before, Jimmy V gave a speech commemorating the Wolfpack's 1983 NCAA championship to the team, current players, and Wolfpack fans. That speech was one for the ages. It will keep you shouting the mantra of, "Don't give up! Don't ever give up!" during any rough time in your life.
Jim Valvano died from the cancer he was determined to fight just a month or so after his legendary ESPY Awards speech. His name and spirit live on through the V Foundation for Cancer Research.
Jim Valvano, truly, never gave up.
