THE FACE IN THE MIRROR
Sue Holbrook
As 2007 fades into the distance, my racing spirit is encouraged by an article I unearthed from a stack of papers on my desk. My New Year's clean out was in full swing when I was stopped in my tracks and had to sit down and read this one again. It's from the Concord Monitor, dated September 15, 2007, written by Dave D'Onofrio of the Monitor Staff.
I'm excited and encouraged because this piece gives insight into Dale Jr's thought process concerning the life changes he made in a most difficult racing season. Rather than describing the experience of deciding to leave DEI as "trying," he said the process was "cathartic." Once he'd chosen his path, the hard part was over...the public unveiling was therapeutic.
"I enjoyed making those decisions, and they liberated me," he said. "I felt good about it. I've been doing all this stuff, and I've been in this situation that I hated. I've been in a situation that's just made me so uncomfortable. I really asked myself, 'All right, I'm miserable. And this continues to make me miserable. Is that what I'm going to be the rest of my life? I'm gonna get to be 60 and go, What the hell? Why didn't I change that? Why didn't I just stop one day and go, look, I don't have to be like this. Why don't I just make a change?' I was able to do that, and it took guts. For me, personally, I felt like I had to be more gutsy."
He went on to speak of the importance of making this one decision for himself and no one else. And then he spoke of the pressure that comes from expectations. "Knowing your potential and not meeting it, that's the pressure. The fans, they get hard and rough on you when you make mistakes or you say the wrong thing, but for the most part you can avoid that, or not listen to that, or not read the papers.
But you can't escape yourself."
If 2007 brought nothing else to the fore in Dale Jr's life, this realization is worth it all. And so, as we stand on the threshold of the 2008 season, whatever it may bring, I raise my glass and toast a young man and his integrity. I'm reminded of a poem written, coincidentally, by another man named Dale...The Man in the Glass:
For it isn't your mother, your father or wife
Whose judgment on you must pass,
But the man whose verdict counts most in your life
Is the one staring back from the glass.
You can fool the whole world,
Down the highway of years,
And take pats on the back as you pass.
But your final reward will be heartache and tears
If you've cheated the man in the glass.
-Excerpts from The Man in the Glass by Dale Wimbrow
