My big take away from this year’s Olympics centered on winning a bronze, not a gold medal. Tuesday, August 3, Simone Biles won a bronze medal for her competition on the “balance beam.” For her, bronze was as good as gold. Coming to the Olympics, she was one of the biggest stars of the Games, projected to win a record five gold medals. She will be remembered not for being the most decorated gymnast in World Championships history, but by withdrawing from competition early in the Games.
She gave her reason for withdrawing: “I have to do what’s right for me and focus on my mental health…that’s why I decided to take a step back.” During warmups for vault, the U.S., women’s first event in the team final, she lost track of where she was in the air and stopped twisting. The same thing happened in the actual competition. She dropped to the ground, nearly landed on her knees, but could have landed on her head, neck or back which could result in paralysis, even death.
A week after withdrawing from team competition, she returned for the last event final, balance beam, where she won the bronze.
Simone is a good witness. Our mental health is as important as our physical health. In fact, the two are intimately connected. Psychologists, sociologists, psychiatrists and others who study the ways of humankind, describe us as driven people. One of our primary characteristics is that we are under enormous stress and pressure. We are tyrannized by fear — fear of failure, fear that we will not achieve, fear that we will not stack up to other people’s expectations of us. Add to that, our confusion about who we are and our uncertainty about where we are going, and you end up with a “stressed-out people.”
I believe that most of the strained relationships we know—the staggering divorce rate, the distrust that characterizes relationships, and the growing climate of violence—are the consequences of this “stressed-out life.”
Isn’t it true that most of us build our lives on the premise that personal worth and significance, as well as meaning in life, is dependent upon achievement, proving ourselves? Too often we are identified by what we produce and what we achieve. We are even identified on the basis of what and how much we consume — not only of material goods but education, public events, passive hobbies and pleasure.
“Burnout” has become a term everybody knows, because we see people around us collapsing into numbness and addiction — if it’s not addiction to drugs, it’s addiction to television and pleasure and the rat-race of getting ahead. All of us must find and take the time to let our souls catch up with our bodies. Someone observed that most of the time we are so anxious to do something that we neglect to be someone.
It’s little wonder that a poll a couple of years ago showed that an overwhelming majority of people from all walks of life, when asked what they wanted most from life, replied “peace of mind.”
That can’t happen if we don’t find and take time to let our souls catch up with our bodies. Stress is one of the number one killers in the world today. The data is clear. There is no killer-disease that is not either caused by, or intensified by our levels of stress.
Thank you, Simone Biles, for dramatically reminding us, we need the place and we need to find the time to allow our souls to catch up with our bodies.