You may not see the relationship between Simone Biles' decision to step out of this year's Olympic competition and the relationship that all of us everyday people have with our dreams but I promise you, it's there. I also promise you that I am going to leave the injected politics of the situation out of this post while I prove it.
Back in the day - eons ago during my jr. high and early high school days - I was in gymnastics. I even placed from time to time and got to hear my name on the morning announcements for my achievements. That's a pretty cool feeling even for a shy girl. Now, before you think I was actually good, let me go ahead and burst that bubble. I was not. While flexible and able to look graceful during floor or balance beam routines, my abilities fell incredibly short in tumbling and anything that required a lack of fear. I am also not a competitive person. Like the vast majority of my counterparts, I was lower level mediocre but I truly loved the sport and harbored the not-so-secret dream of waking up one day to find that I had magically become good enough to compete in the Olympic games in my future. The thing is, dreams don't become reality by magic. This is true no matter what they may be. Dreams are all fine and dandy when they are sitting in your head as a thought. Birthing them into being requires WORK. It also requires a plan, tenacity, and resilience. Without these things talents cannot be developed. A person cannot overcome the fear of both success and failure. The path cannot be forged. Now let's talk about pain for a moment because guess what: Turning a dream into reality requires pain. The undertaking is, at it's foundation, a birthing process. Pain is part of the territory. In the case of gymnastics, yes, gymnasts train and compete while injured. I can't tell you the number of times I performed a routine with at least one ankle taped nearly stationary because I had twisted it earlier and needed the added stability. I had friends who came to practice or meets with broken fingers or toes. We wore knee supports or wrist supports. Ace bandages and sports tape were common place. Pulled muscles were everyday events. Even at the ripe old age of 14, most of us didn't know what it was like to not be at some level of soreness every day. The top gymnast in my school - a girl who was good enough that she competed in larger area/state competitions - wore a tens unit during practice after breaking her arm. And before you make that face, this is normal. This is what it takes to compete even at the level where you're lucky if 20 people are in the bleachers watching. We also showed up for practice or competitions when our hearts were breaking as they did so very often at that age. We showed up after we came in last on the scoreboard. We showed up when we were struggling with every day life. We showed up when we were afraid we might not be able to fit it all in. We showed up...until we didn't. That was the moment that the dream died. So, how does this relate to Ms. Biles, those of us trying to birth that weird little creative urge into something viable, or anyone just working on the dream of making ends meet? Let's work our way up from the incredibly difficult world of just keeping up with the bills. In order to live paycheck to paycheck while keeping your head above water, you plan for your expenses and work accordingly. This means going to work when you'd rather go on vacation. You go to work when your back hurts or you've had a craptastic day. You set the alarm and get your butt out of bed when you didn't sleep well. You keep your eye out for a better paying job than the one you have now. If you want to actually put money away into savings, you step up that game and do more of it. How many people do you know in wrist braces for carpal tunnel, or special inserts to help with sciatica, or those who work around broken bones? How about the ones who manage with disabilities? What about those who show up even in the middle of divorces or custody battles or shortly after the death of a loved one? How many people out there are trying to turn their creative dreams into reality even though it feels like all they encounter is rejection or lukewarm, shrugging acceptance that disappears almost the second it is given? How many creatives out there feed their dreams with tiny scraps of hope and haul their behinds out of bed when they have the flu just to move them a minuscule step closer to reality? How many work through injury and apathy in the hopes of seeing that little spark they have inside them light up the world? Like I said, turning a dream into reality is a painful process. It honestly doesn't matter what the dream is. Just ask Wesley from The Princess Bride: "Life is pain, princess...anyone who says differently is selling something." So, how does this relate to Ms. Biles? Do I think she failed? Do I think she should be honored for her choice to step back? Honestly, neither. And this is another really important point I'd like to make here. My opinion of her decision SHOULD NOT matter. She made the choice for her own reasons as it should be. I will be snotty enough to say that I wish she had made it prior to committing to participation on the world stage, but that brings up an even bigger point that I want to mention: outside expectation. We, as onlookers, tend to push people we don't even know to greater and greater levels of achievement just to please us. Sometimes this is a good thing as it encourages progress. I think this is especially true in the beginning stages of bringing a dream to life, when the struggle becomes drudgery, or when an individual has hit an uncomfortable plateau in their journey. Without a little outside pressure, those dreams would wilt and die. Other times, as with Ms. Biles, that encouragement shifts into a demand for more and greater achievements that (most likely) have nothing to do with her original goals. It's like adding too much fertilizer to a garden. Instead of nourishment, the dream burns up. Had she competed at the same superb level as before, there are far too many people in the audience who would have been disappointed that she did not bring more to the table this time. Why on earth would she have any desire at all to continue working through the physical and emotional discomforts/pain in order to have the armchair gymnasts out there casting disappointed looks at her as they lounged on their couches eating their favorite snack? She has already achieved the dream of Olympic gold. She is not responsible for fulfilling the dreams of those who only want to watch her do it again...only "better" this time. At the same time, I wish that she had come to this conclusion earlier. I wish that she had not been in the spotlight when she made it. It's a seriously off note in the symphony of her accomplishments, and the timing does not speak to the professionalism that I believe Olympic competition should require. In my writing world, it would be like me achieving the status of having three books in the series I'm working on hit the best seller list and then pulling the fourth from publication the day before it was supposed to be released. My guess is that she'll go into retirement. If she had a dream to take home the gold from another Olympics, that dream is probably gone now. No judgement, here. That's just the cost of stepping back when she did. Reality is unforgiving to dreams that way. I hope you're still breathing through the difficulties of the next step towards yours.
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June 2022
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