Inspiration, Inc

For a good dose of inspirational uplift, I have included a transcript of one of the many pep talks given to Rocky Balboa whenever he spiraled into depression after not winning the World Championship for a few years. This particular speech is given by Oprah-in-training / supportive spouse Adrian Balboa in Rocky III.

• Adrian: I wanna ask you something important and I want you to tell me the truth.
  
• Rocky: What?
  
• Adrian: Why’d you come here?
  
• Rocky: I just don’t want it no more.
  
• Adrian: If it’s over because you want it to be over, I’m glad.
  
• Rocky: I do.
  
• Adrian: It’s just, you’ve never quit anything since I’ve known you.
  
• Rocky: I don’t know what you want me to say. I mean what happened? How did everything that’s so good become so bad?
  
• Adrian: What’s so bad? Tell me, what?
  
• Rocky: I wrecked everything by not thinking for myself. Why couldn’t Mickey tell me where I was really at right from the start? He didn’t have to carry me and lie to me and make me think I was really better than I was when I wasn’t.
  
• Adrian: He never lied.
  
• Rocky: Those fights weren’t right. They weren’t, Adrian. I never fought anybody who was in their prime. There was always some angle to hold onto the title longer than I should have had it. Do you understand what I’m saying here?
  
• Adrian: I understand, but you’ve gotta understand that he loved you and that was his job – protecting you!
  
• Rocky: But that protecting don’t help nothin’. It only makes things worse. You wake up after a few years thinking you’re a winner, but you’re not. You’re really a loser. So we wouldn’t have had the title as long. So what? At least it would have been real, Adrian.
  
• Adrian: It was real!
  
• Rocky: Nothing is real if you don’t believe in who you are! I don’t believe in myself no more! Don’t you understand?! When a fighter don’t believe that’s it. He’s finished, it’s over, that’s it!
  
• Adrian: That’s not it!
  
• Rocky: That is it!
  
• Adrian: Why don’t you tell me the truth?!
  
• Rocky: What are you putting me through, Adrian!? You wanna know the truth?! I don’t wanna lose what I got!! In the beginning, I didn’t care about what happened to me. I’d go in the ring, I’d get busted up, I didn’t care! But now there’s you. There’s the kid. I don’t wanna lose what I got.
  
• Adrian: What do we have that can’t be replaced? What?! A house? We got cars, we got money! We got everything but the truth. What’s the truth, damn it?!
  
• Rocky: I’m afraid!! All right?! You wanna hear me say it?! You wanna break me down!? All right, I’m afraid!! For the first time in my life, I’m afraid.
  
• Adrian: I’m afraid, too. There’s nothing wrong with being afraid.
  
• Rocky: There is. For me, there is!!
  
• Adrian: Why? You’re human, aren’t you?
  
• Rocky: I don’t know what I am. All I know is I’m a liar, and because of that, Mickey ain’t here no more.
  
• Adrian: You didn’t push him into anything! He was a grown man and he did what he had to do! And you have no right to feel guilty for what happened. You don’t!! You were a champion and you did what you were expected to do, and you did what I and everyone else thought you should do. And you wanna tell me that those fights weren’t real, that you weren’t carried. Well, I don’t believe it!! But it doesn’t matter what I believe because you’re the one that’s gotta carry that fear around inside of you-- afraid that everybody’s gonna take things away and afraid you’re gonna be remembered as a coward, but you’re not that man anymore. Well, none of it’s true. But it doesn’t matter if I tell you. It doesn’t matter, because you’re the one that’s gotta settle it. Get rid of it! Because when all the smoke has cleared and everyone’s through chanting your name, it’s just gonna be us. And you can’t live like this. We can’t live like this. Cause it’s gonna bother you for the rest of your life. Look what it’s doing to you now. [Tinkling piano starts here.] Apollo thinks you can do it. So do I. But you gotta do it for the right reason. [A harp starts playing here.] Not for the guilt over Mickey, not for the people, not or the title, not for money or me, but for you. Just you. Just you alone.
  
• Rocky: And if I lose?
  
• Adrian: Then you lose. But at least you lose with no excuses, no fear. And I know you can live with that.
  
• Rocky: How’d you get so tough?
  
• Adrian: I live with a fighter.
  

©1982 Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone. All Rights Reserved.

Indecipherable? Perhaps.
Soul inspiring? Without a doubt!