discipline and grit
Olympians rock
The Olympics finish their fortnight run this weekend, with some amazing feats in the books. Sure, some of us breathed a sigh of relief that the US Men’s basketball team found the persistence to come back from a seventeen point deficit to beat a scrappy Serbian squad yesterday but it was a superb game. Bully for all those on the court!
Two aging, by Olympic standards, woman drew my fascination, however. Both elite sports or modelling almost invariably spotlight youth. Goodness, our society absolutely adores youth as the young bring repeated freshness to a world bored with something that happened last month, much less three years ago. Too often humans suffer with some sort of collective attention deficit syndrome about virtually everything and everything so we turn to a new crowd to revive ourselves. We relish new songs! We devour the best sellers lists to figure which books we haven’t read. We try new restaurants to seek the food we haven’t had. In photography, this is GAS: gear acquisition syndrome. Comparable terms exist for our proclivity to value new over old in other fields but I am humored that we just think something new, without strings attached, makes the world better somehow.
Maybe, maybe not. Or, perhaps it’s just my misread of the world today.
Yet the Olympics celebrates those with incredible discipline, determination, and persistence, all traits developed over a prolonged period which aging provides. Maybe it’s because I have been so unsuccessful at many things but I am so impressed by the success those attributes make possible. Note that the need for determination, grit, and discipline, not to mention persistence, applies not only to the athletes but the support teams who play such a vital role in their careers. The coaches and especially the parents who spend countless hours schlepping kids to practices at o-dark-thirty or pass up family holidays to assure the child makes it to a meet deserve as much praise as the athletes because the investment of time is irretrievable. Success depends on that support as well as the natural abilities these individuals possess.
I could go on about the various success stories as there are so many. I will note how exhilarating to hear that a runner from Botswana won his country’s first gold ever, assuring he will be a national hero in that southern African nation. Each and every one participating has a story and along with at least five minutes’ glory to have participated in the Games, whether or not a medal goes home in one’s suitcase.
I do want to note a curiosity about arguably the USA’s biggest stars in Paris. Of course, Steph Currie was amazing but Simone Biles’s and Katie Ledecky’s achievements were simply a cut above. Each woman is 27, born in mid-March 1997.
Biles, the elder by a whopping three days, is a fireball whose talent in gymnastics is breathtaking. Awarded eleven gold medals over her decade at the Games, Biles’s talent is board in her sport: balance beam, vault, and floor exercises. Her brilliant smile reinforces the incredible grace and skill she exudes every time she competes.
Her journey to the sport was an unexpected one after her mother’s inability to care for Biles and three siblings required placement in foster care before an eventual adoption by her maternal grandparents, shifting her from Ohio to a Houston suburb. Biles’s route to that discipline and grit took her through home schooling as well as public education at points, the former allowing more time for practice but still preparing her to attend UCLA upon earning her high school diploma. Although she did not go to college after all, her option was there because of the prep she had done.
Biles participated in 2016 at the Rio Oympiad where she thrilled judges and fans alike. Tokyo, five years later because of COVID, might actually have been her finest moment, oddly. Biles had the self-awareness and chutzpah to withdraw partway through the Games because of mental health pressures. At a time when anxieties ran so high around the world about even holding the games, much less the pressure put upon her after excelling at the elite level for several years, Biles’s decision to withdraw subjected her to criticisms and doubts. She stuck to her decision on the basis of what she knew she needed for mental health, a courageous act for someone upon whom much attention focused.
Her return in Paris left many to wonder whether she could be back in top form at 27, now married and the old woman in a sport she had dominated for fully a decade. While she did fall off the balance beam in the finals for that competition, Biles’s overall performance, so often introducing ever higher levels of challenge to her various routines and to the sport itself, leaves her tied as the second-most decorated female gymnast ever and a true artist in her field. She also showed whimsy in her willingness to support teammates rather than demand all of the attention for herself as an awardee of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Katie Ledecky’s path might have been less fraught at a young age but her skill in a water sport is equally breathtaking. Ledecky swam in the Washington, D.C. metro area, specializing in freestyle. Her 9 Olympic and 21 World championship gold medals, along with overall performance back to the London 2012 Games, make her remarkable not only for her successes in the pool but for her durability in a sport demanding such endurance and strength. Ledecky is the fifth most decorated athlete in any Olympic sport since the modern games commenced in 1896, plus she holds multiple world records in swimming.
Ledecky’s discipline also opened the door to earning an undergraduate degree from Stanford in psychology. Like Biles, President Biden honored her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom earlier this year. Her discipline and dedication to the sport are renowned. My respect for someone with that endurance is inestimable.
Sports, of course, are not the sole field where these attributes matter. One must have the same qualities in most careers yet we seem taken with those less interested in the sustaining aspects of success.
In the era of riffing about crowd size or couches, I fear that discipline needed by all of the olympians is a four letter word many across society today. People either eschew discipline with horror from conjugating verbs in elementary school or simply cannot commit to a single-mindedness that our social media-driven world does not encourage. The truth is that rigorous, disciplined ways of life too often are boring for people these days. These athletes deserve our awe for their willingness to put other things aside to keep their eyes on their prizes. Actions really did create consequences for those who participated, much less those who won.
Thank you for your time reading Actions today. I welcome any thoughts about discipline, grit, or where we might apply it better in addressing our challenges as a contemporary world. Thanks for reading today or any other day. Please feel free to circulate if you find this of value. I especially appreciate those who subscribe to Actions Create Consequences.
The storm is departing (they keep telling us) but I got a single shot this morning to provide evidence the sun is behind the clouds, readying a return this weekend.
Be well and be safe. FIN