By Leesville Mayor Rick Allen

When people have to work their entire life only to retire and look back and say, I wish I would have done this or that while I was young. The truth is that they were doing everything that they felt like they could do at that time. Balancing a career, church, family and as much recreation as they could. I always said when I retire, I will do whatever I want. Honestly, I work 100 hours per week because I like to work and I probably will never stop.

One thing that I learned from Michael Jordan’s amazing career was that people didn’t remember any of the shots he missed only the ones he made. There’s only one thing I’m sure of and that is if he never let the fact that he missed more shots than he made affect him. He never let statistics be the deciding factor. If he had the opportunity, he took the shot. But my favorite thing about him was that if one of his teammates were open, he was quick to pass the ball and encouraged his teammates to shoot. He made this statement “Talent wins games. Teamwork wins championships and that’s what I’m after.”

You won’t know the results unless you take the shot. Will you miss some? Yes. Everyone does and if they don’t miss it’s because they are not shooting. I see a lot of preachers quote a well-known scripture. In Micah 7:8 it says rejoice not against me oh my enemy for when I’m down I shall arise and when I sit in darkness the Lord is a light unto me. I have this scripture on the rear fender of my 2012 championship dirt bike and my competitors, who are also my friends, would ask “what does that scripture say?” I would always reply, “what it means to me is that if I fall down, I’m going to get back up and I’m coming to the front.” They would always laugh when I told them that, but the fact that I won 28 of the 32 races that year, they also knew it was true.

I want to close with this, take the shot don’t hold the ball and wonder what would have happened. Life is short and you deserve to be happy. Do you remember the game that Michael Jordan’s buzzer shot missed the whole backboard by 4 feet? I didn’t think so. Take the shot.