In the 1980s, AT&T was focused on putting phones in cars, but Jesse Russell had another idea. “Why don't we just take the phones out of the car and put them on the people?”
Russell’s patents include the Mobile Data Telephone, and the Wireless Communication Base Station. But before Russell achieved all of these accolades, he only saw himself as an athlete at the time.
After attending a summer educational program, he recognized his gift in electrical engineering. His decision to focus on engineering has a lesson for us.
Sports analyst Jemele Hill stated that our young athletes are “conditioned to think that all you have to offer is your body. What’s the point of working on any other part of who I am as a fully realized human being?"
We are more than just bodies. When we realize that our value is not tied to how we can be used by capitalism, we experience true freedom. What would the world look like if we determined our value based on our existence instead of our bodies?