While I usually follow the highlights of the winter Olympics, especially ice skating and skiing, and often the highlights of the summer one’s too, usually in the area of swimming and gymnastics, somehow, even though she is the greatest gymnastics athlete in Olympics history, I had not heard of Simone Biles until this week.
After a rough week with a couple of falls, she announced that for the sake of her mental health she is taking a break from the Olympics, thereby disqualifying herself from the opportunity to walk away with much anticipated gold medals.
She is 24 years old. At the peak of her Olympian career. With the whole world watching. And she is aware enough of her mental limits to know when she ought to press the pause button, and what she will be forfeiting for doing so.
Wow, what incredible mental strength! In an ironic twist, her choice to depart for the sake of her mental health only proves how very strong her mental health is.
It seems Simone is a leader and a role model in the deeper sense of the word. While until this point Simone Biles may have been a leader and role model to young girls for the dazzling flips and twists in the air she pulled off — remarkable achievements that speak of legendary discipline and many other important qualities such as team work — I wonder if in contrast to all the pomp and circumstance of her performances, it is this act of precisely the opposite, of sharing her vulnerability with such candor, that will ultimately be her legacy.
Who better than an Olympian athlete to model the important lesson of sticking things out, overcoming weaknesses and sacrificing for greater goals?
But rarely are there things in life that ought to be practiced at all costs.
Dedication is admirable. But knowing when there comes a time to pull out, since otherwise the costs will be too steep, is one of life’s wisdom moments. No one can know it other than each person herself or himself.
Everyone reaches a breaking point, and honoring it, or rather honoring the prevention of it, is vital.
Only each person can really know the difference between growth that comes from great discomfort and actual crisis.
Simone Biles seems to have arrived at her moment where she knew, despite the prospective gold medals, she’d reached her near breaking point.
It takes a special strength of character to do what Simone Biles did.
At the same time, I hope it’s not the pressure for perfectionism that triggered Simone’s choice to pull out after a rough week. Perfectionism is so debilitating. It should not be the barometer by which choices are made. Yet, in the world of Olympics, that’s precisely the metric. Once an Olympian reaches the summit of his or her sport, the pressures that weigh on them can become unbearable.
Most of us are not Olympic athletes and these types of struggles we cannot relate to.
Yet we all wrestle with our own personal tug-of-wars, of push and pull, knowing the right balance. Simone Biles demonstrated a real maturity, that the real gold is in listening to our own hearts. The answer lies within each of us.
An Olympics gold medal is an unmatched symbol of status and prowess, especially for our youth and in a society that takes it as the ultimate, tangible symbol of accomplishment. She swapped that and surpassed it for her well being. That is a lesson perhaps greater than any gold medal she could have won.
There is plenty of criticism pouring out about her decision. Some are deeming her a failure. I’m cheering Simone Biles on.
While I strongly subscribe to the ethos of not walking away even when there is great discomfort, and in fact it is often the discomfort that brings the most growth, the Olympics are an extreme. There, a tipping point can be the difference between remaining mentally sound or not, given the scoreboards with the thinnest of gradations. It is important for athletes to know their limits and be able to articulate them safely.
Granted, the Olympics are ultimately a forum of entertainment for millions around the world. It’s an industry. It’s high financial stakes. It’s not only about a lofty ideal of reaching the limits of the human body and the human spirit etc. etc. Yes, that is what the audiences are witness to and inspired by, but there is a more complex dimension to the Olympics beyond the audiences’ eye.
Simone Biles walked away from the pressures not seen by the audiences.
Not everything justifies the means, and Simone Biles was saying, my mental health does not justify the means.
Olympians or not, we all struggle with our vulnerabilities. No one else can make the calculations.
True, becoming an Olympic athlete is an elective process, not a coercive one. Yet, within the world of the Olympics, at times the goal of the effort to get the gold medal is not to disappoint the dream of millions of fans, or to secure a financial deal, or to bring glory to one’s country. All this creates a certain degree of coercion.
Simone Biles has been an incredible athlete and should be proud of her accomplishments. Now she has given the rest of us who only watch the Olympics some food for thought about where, when and how lines can be drawn in competitive sports and other highly competitive environments, in the interest of prioritizing mental health.
For that, I am cheering her on.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
