I sit and I cry.

I’ve gone through this thing the past couple weeks. I watched the Ken Burns documentary on Jack Johnson—the fighter, not the singer. I watched two different Muhammad Ali. I watched Spike Lee’s Malcolm X. And then I watched a touching film about Joe Lewis and Max Schmeling. Which raised my desire to revisit the film about James Braddock...called Cinderella Man.

It opens in 1928 when he makes $8,000 as a fighter one night. Moments later we’re transported five years in the future. Men are fighting for jobs. Our hero has gone from living in a big house in

New York to living in an apartment in New Jersey with his wife and family. He’s unable to complete a fight to make $50.

I relate. In the past 5 years I’ve moved from a 2,300 square foot house, to a 2 bedroom condo to a 1 bedroom apartment. Yeah, except that back then they were fighting to put food on the table. They were fighting to keep kids with their parents. Fighting just to survive.

 

So maybe it’s just Ron Howard’s brilliant filmmaking, but every time I watch this film I can’t seem to keep from tearing up at the plight that these people went though. My grandparents and my great grandparents. They didn’t have iPhones or worry about if they should buy a Kindle or an iPad. They were trying to keep from selling all they had to keep their children. They hoped to keep their kids from stealing or from having to live on a farm somewhere.

 

 

I’m humbled. I cry. I pray for those worse off than myself.