My Night with Charlie Sheen

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We all love celebrities right? The majestic and seemingly unobtainable lives of these modern idols stirs the dreamer in all of us. Yet, somewhere along the road the media has drowned us in a sea of mundane, fabricated celebrity vilification, because let’s face it, we thrive from greatness falling from grace. With slander being the face of celebrity culture in our day and age we so often forget the purpose and power of what these humans truly have to offer the world. This has never felt more potent than my intimate time spent with the ever charming, tabloid fodder Charlie Sheen.

This is a man who by all accounts fulfils the gossip columns quota for crazy just by waking up in the morning and with just cause too, he has been condemned for everything from mind-blowing benders to pulling a knife on his dentist and of course a heavy dose of tiger blood™. Personally what Charlie does with his fame and fortune is no concern of mine, in fact like any of his peers all that matters is their craft, expertise and entertainment. However, if we are constantly barraged in the negativity of their personal lives, this is the image we uphold of even the greatest amongst us. So when Charlie arrives looking strung out and slurring the alarm bells ring and our innate response screams “everything we read is true, this man is on something” …how wrong were we.

Honesty, charisma and spirit were all that was served up and it was so swiftly affirmed that Charlie is far from the product we read about and more akin to the reason he gets to sit on the throne of fame. Humans have no responsibility to justify their actions, but Charlie did, openly, candidly and suddenly we remember that their darkest times (like our own) can be handled with grace and humility and just like that we are reminded of what builds greatness. Muhammed Ali will always be remembered as the greatest, but what made him definitively a winner was his dedication to overcoming the odds and striving when life was stacked against him, an inherently humanistic quality. We don’t idolise the exclusive, we worship those who stood tall against the enemy and came out on top, this is the quality of a champion and a quality Charlie Sheen exuded with no fear.

I don’t care how bad your life is or how dark these days are, the power is on you to shine on and prove to this world that being great doesn’t define your greatness and losing doesn’t make you a loser. At any given moment, you can decide to take action, to fight back, to live life the way you dreamed and there is no one, I repeat no one who will do it better than you. Charlie Sheen has now publicly stated that he is HIV Positive and continues to be a beacon of light for those who need it the most. What will you do today?

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