It was just an ordinary Saturday a couple of months ago. I was at my parent’s house, sitting on the couch. As I enjoyed my bowl of cinnamon life, I turned on ESPN expecting to see what happened the day before in the world of sports. What happened for the next seven and a half minutes not only brought me to tears but it gave me a new outlook on life.

Instead of showing highlights from the Mets and Phillies series, ESPN was doing a human interest piece on an 18 year old kid from Western Pennsylvania. His name was John Challis, and like every other student in his class he was preparing to graduate. What set John Challis apart from his friends is that he was dying of cancer. If you haven’t heard of John Challis simply click here. This article isn’t meant to retell his story. Rather it’s to explain how simply learning about what John went through can change your life.

John Challis was a kid who expressed himself through sports and so, when doctors found a ten pound tumor the size of a football in his liver, it would have perfectly understandable if he decided to give up. He did exactly the opposite. He continued to be apart of the teams he loved and at the weight of 92 pounds, a shadow of his former self, John hit an rbi single in his only high school at bat.

As I stated earlier this story was on ESPN a few months ago. Recently I was having an awful week and I was starting to feel down about my situation. Work wasn’t going well and I was incredibly unsatisfied with my station in life. It was at that moment that a ticker passed on the bottom of the screen during Sportscenter stating that John Challis had passed away. I thought I had forgotten about his story until this point but when my eyes started welling up with tears I knew that his message was still in my heart. Here was an 18 year old kid who I never met and I was crying over his death. Since that time I have made some changes in my own life to make sure I don’t get complacent and simply accept what life hands me.

I didn’t write this to pat myself on the back for changing my life around. Nor did I write it so other people would congratulate me for following my heart. I wrote this so that everyone can realize that we are surrounded by amazing people every single day. I’ll never get a chance to thank John Challis for how he’s inspired me, but something tells me he already knows.