Travis & Taylor & Who You Are Becoming | PASSAGES :005
“Be fearless and pure... Be self-controlled, sincere, truthful, loving, and full of the desire to serve."
My twelve year-old daughter, like pre-teen and teenage girls everywhere, knows who Travis Kelce is. A few months ago, however, she had no idea who he was—the two-time Super Bowl champion tight end for the Kansas City Chiefs.
You’d almost have to have your head buried in the sand over the past few months to know why so many young non-football fans now know who this guy is. It’s because he started dating megastar-musician Taylor Swift, of course!
After the 12-time Grammy Award winner first showed up at one of Kelce’s games in September, sales of his #87 jersey skyrocketed by 400%. TV viewership increased too. The new couple became a topic of conversation all over the place. Some even speculated that this was one of those celebrity dating publicity stunts intended to generate attention for one or both persons involved (likely Kelce, right?).
That last part sounds crazy. And it apparently isn’t true. But also… it isn’t too far from the truth!
This past week one of my brother’s sent me a New York Times article titled, “The People Who Brought You Travis Kelce.” Apparently, a pair of brothers started managing the football player over a decade ago and they hatched a plan to make Kelce “as famous as the Rock,” as in Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, former pro wrestler, massive movie star, and more.
Dating the first person to break the billion-dollar barrier of concert tour ticket sales wasn’t in the plan, which included things like a popular Spotify podcast with his brother (also an NFL player), lots of TV commercials, hosting Saturday Night Live (winning the Super Bowl again helped with this one), and potential movies. But this swift twist certainly fit with the program—to get Kelce in front of diverse audiences and expand his brand on the way to turning him into a bigger-than-football superstar!
So will this big plan happen?!
Will we see Kelce in a Fast and Furious 15??!!
Or some action thriller taking place in a jungle somewhere???!!!
Wait—you might be asking—is this post seriously still talking about Travis Kelce AND WHAT THE HELL IS THE POINT OF ALL OF THIS?
Well, I’m so glad you asked.
At this point, it is very tempting to look at this whole scenario and launch into a tirade about how shallow our culture is… with its ambition and greed and lust. Its obsession with fame and wealth. “Our culture is so gross,” my brother wrote. And I concurred.
And it would be really easy to talk about how EMPTY it all is.
But I want to invite you to consider something else, especially here at the beginning of the year. I want to ask a simple question:
What if you approached this coming year as your own manager, like Mr. Kelce has had at least a pair of? Not a manager who is obsessed with your image and growing your fame and obsessed with accumulating more, but as a manager who is focused on you becoming more whole, more fully yourself, more alive and involved in participating in the renewal of all things.
In other words, how would you manage yourself to become the kind of person that the Bhagavad Gita and other ancient wisdom texts talk about, the kind of human that the world desperately needs more of?
“Be fearless and pure; never waver in your determination to your dedication to the spiritual life. Give freely. Be self-controlled, sincere, truthful, loving, and full of the desire to serve. Realize the truth of the scriptures; learn to be detached and take joy in renunciation. Do not get angry or harm any living creature, but be compassionate and gentle; show good will to all. Cultivate vigor, patience, will, purity; avoid malice and pride. Then… you will achieve your divine destiny.”
Becoming this kind of human may not make you a megastar who is swimming in cash and appears on big billboards and is in every other commercial you see, but it sure is the kind of human being we need more of right now.
So, I invite you to be dedicated and active and intentional about your inner growth. To not just leave your personal development on the backburner. To think about this next year as if you were your own manager for this “spiritual life” (which you actually are, by the way!):
What postures would you embrace?
How would you spend your time?
What would you stop doing?
What practices would you commit to?
What people would you spend time with?
What would you give your attention to?
Now go and do such things!