The Brighter the Picture, the Darker the Negative
To see someone take such pride in their craft is always respectable. As a writer, I strive to better myself, and I wish I had 1/10th the verve and dedication that Chris Benoit had for his art form. Many will dismiss his craft out of hand because it was pro wrestling, but there is a skill to working a crowd, to telling a story through staged violence. There are real injuries which occur (including a broken neck for Benoit at one point), but he always pushed ahead.
It was that dedication and drive which I always respected the hell out of. It was a metric by which to judge the effort I put forth in my own life, towards fufilling my dreams.
But you can never truly know someone from their public image. This is disturbingly apparent now, with the deaths of the Benoit family. It looks increasingly like Chris strangled his wife Nancy with an electrical cord, smothered his son Daniel with a bag, and hung himself in his weight room. Greatness and sickness appear to have been hand-in-hand once again.
What makes a person do such a thing? How unhappy do you have to be to kill your wife and child? Is it chemical? What was his home life really like all these years? What could possibly be so broken in his world that he would feel the need to smother his seven year-old son? How does someone so great in other ways fall so short as a husband, father, and human being?
I wish I had answers for any of these questions. I don't.
It was that dedication and drive which I always respected the hell out of. It was a metric by which to judge the effort I put forth in my own life, towards fufilling my dreams.
But you can never truly know someone from their public image. This is disturbingly apparent now, with the deaths of the Benoit family. It looks increasingly like Chris strangled his wife Nancy with an electrical cord, smothered his son Daniel with a bag, and hung himself in his weight room. Greatness and sickness appear to have been hand-in-hand once again.
What makes a person do such a thing? How unhappy do you have to be to kill your wife and child? Is it chemical? What was his home life really like all these years? What could possibly be so broken in his world that he would feel the need to smother his seven year-old son? How does someone so great in other ways fall so short as a husband, father, and human being?
I wish I had answers for any of these questions. I don't.