Who is he? Damar Hamlin is a 25-year-old NFL safety for the Buffalo Bills, and made headlines earlier this year for collapsing on the field during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals on Jan. 2nd.
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What's the big deal? This week, Hamlin announced his clearance to return to the NFL in September, with a renewed sense of purpose: raising awareness for the cardiac condition that caused his collapse in the first place.
What are people saying now?
On his feelings towards returning to the sport:
My heart is still in it. My heart is still in the game, I love the game. It's something I want to prove to myself — not nobody else. I just want to show people that fear is a choice. You can keep going in something without having the answers and without knowing what's at the end of the tunnel. Or you might feel anxious, you might feel any type of way, but you keep putting that right foot in front of the left one and you keep going. I want to stand for that.
On surviving this ordeal:
"Not to sound cliché, but the wild moment is every day just being able to wake up and take deep breaths and live a peaceful life. To have a family, to have people around me that love me and care about me, and for those people to still have me in their lives. You know they almost lost me. I died on national TV in front of the whole world. So, I see it from all perspectives. For them to still have me around, and for me to still have them, it goes both ways. And I lost a bunch of people in my life, and I know a bunch of people who have lost people in their lives, and I know that feeling. So that right there is just the biggest blessing of it all. For me to still have my people, and for my people to still have me."
So, what now?
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