http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r-u7YAGLoA

As a Celtics fan, I’ve always hated Kobe. I resent all those buckets he made in 2008 and 2010, much more so in 2010 when I felt like we gave the title to him and his team. Everything good moves he made I resented. I guess that resentment was all much due to my mind being young. Or perhaps the fact that I’m a Celtics fan limited myself to the idea that I’m supposed to hate everything about the Lakers and Kobe. But of course, everything that is living is supposed to grow, and that’s exactly what happened to my thought process as it went along the motion of invariable time. Consequently, my approach to things changed due to maturation. My attitude towards people and things I used to resent has changed. Kobe Bryant wasn’t much of an exemption. In fact, documenting the social media reveals about Kobe made me realize that there is so much a parallel between me and him, especially when it comes to our approach to things.

I ran across a video where Kobe was being interviewed for Bloomberg Business. The video started sort of in the middle of his response from an earlier question, but it didn’t make much of a difference to how I processed the content it showed. The genesis of the video was when Kobe was saying that all the muses of his past has formed him into who he is now. The rest of the video, in turn, was his account of who he is now, focusing on his approach to others.

One of the biggest misconceptions about relating to others is that there is strictly one effective approach to it. For some, the ability to relate to others is directly proportional to how often you talk and talk and talk. The truth is, however, that people are different. Each individual has gone through different things that forged his or her unique personality. Every personality encapsulates many different things about that person which includes, of course, the way that person relates to others.

As Kobe describes his approach to relating to others in the video, I find myself saying “That’s exactly what I will do!” Kobe also went on to say that he would cold-call those who lead in their own industries, those people such as Ariana Huffington, Oprah Winfrey, and Jony Ive. He talked about his connection with Jony Ive—one of the leaders in Apple, and as he was describing it, I couldn’t help myself thinking “That’s very much exactly what I would do if I were in his position”. But of course, I have no means to connect with Jony Ive, let alone Kobe himself. Not yet. Perhaps, though, we share a similar disposition in terms of how we relate to others. He was pointing out that he has a cerebral approach to how he relates to others. When it comes to relating to others, he dissects the person down intellectually; he wants to know what drives others to do things they do, how others see things, how do others process things as they see it. I definitely did not know I have a similar disposition with him but I found out because I found tremendous comfort in that approach. That approach affirms my own personality. It allows me to be myself.

I like to break things down and make sense of things intellectually, and it’s a matter of comfort. I want to point the difference, though, between breaking down and making sense of things. I know that there are some things we run into our lives that won’t make sense, and certainly people have their own approach on how to make sense of things. I’m one of those people, just like Kobe, who are inclined to make sense of things intellectually. For both Kobe and I, we just found a home in the realm of intellect. I don’t know how we come share that realm, but I’m glad we have a common ground despite the green, the purple and gold.