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Simone Biles is My Hero
On July 28, 2021, Simone Biles – one of the most accomplished gymnasts of our era – withdrew from the Tokyo Olympics. She alluded to her struggles on Instagram by posting: "I truly do feel like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders at times. I know I brush it off and make it seem like pressure doesn't affect me but damn sometimes it's hard hahaha!" That “hahaha” might make it sound like it was no big deal, but later interviews revealed that there were darker forces afoot. It was soon revealed that she withdrew for mental health reasons. The straw that broke the camels back was her experiencing of "the twisties," a psychological phenomenon which causes a gymnast to lose in-air awareness while performing twisting elements which could prove fatal. Simone’s attitude was humble, yet realistic. “At the end of the day, I have to do what was right for me … It just sucks that it happened at the Olympic Games.” You can’t control when these things happen, but you can always make the decision to pause, no matter what people say.
To my mind, Simone exemplifies true gevurah (courage). Chazal teach: “Who is a gibor (courageous person)? One who conquers their inclination” (Avos 4:1). I’ve read a number of articles about the pressure Biles felt to perform while the spotlight of the world was on her. I don’t know what was actually going on in her mind, but as a fellow Type A personality, I suspect that the popular assessment is off base. Her courage was not expressed in standing up to the world, but in standing up to herself. Those who don’t share this type of personality imagine that the pressure comes from the outside world. I can assure you, it comes from within. And as Anne Lamott says, the task of dealing with this pressure “is an inside job.”
I saw a chilling quotation from another interview with her. "This Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself when I came in — and I felt like I was still doing it for other people … So that just, like, hurts my heart because doing what I love has been kind of taken away from me to please other people." When I heard this, it terrified me. I love what I do, day in and day out. I live for teaching. I have always been excited to go work every day. And yet, I have recently come to realize how much pressure I put on myself. This pressure manifests as a need to please others, even if it’s driven by internal forces and inner critics. It terrifies me to think what would happen if I somehow slipped into a mode where I felt the need to teach in order to please other people. Such a life would be no life.
Simone’s withdrawal from the Olympics serves as a wake-up call for all personalities that are driven to go, go, go. She reminds us of a truth I made into a mantra for myself: “You don’t have to do anything, but you can’t do everything.” She reminds us that it doesn’t matter what the stakes are, or how many people are expecting you to perform, or how much you, yourself, are invested in “being the best.” What matters most is you.
I’ve been reading Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, by Greg McKeown. He writes:
Your obligation is to the highest point of contribution you can make. I think what happens a lot is that people get caught up in the idea that, “Can I do this thing?” They pretend there’s nothing else going on in their life. The request comes in and they go, “Can I do this? Well, yes, I can do this. I know how to do this. I can make this happen.” That’s not life. That’s non-essentialist junk. That’s just rubbish. The question is, “If I do this thing, what doesn’t get done? What else gets pushed out?”
In Simone’s case, what might have gotten pushed out was her life. In other cases, it is the ability to live our lives, which is nearly as important. The moral of the story is: don’t push yourself out of your own life.
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