Is it possible that if each one of us were to dedicate ourselves as fully as these folk do to whatever endeavor we chose that we would reach a level beyond our peers such as they have? I'm not sure whether we would all reach levels so clearly separate. There's obviously some inherent qualities, physical or mental, that set these folk apart. But, I am equally certain that we would be much better at our endeavor than we so easily accept.I have always believed that the last sentence is true: that almost all of us could give more, experience more, achieve more, if we only put our will to it. But ... but, more of what? And who is to measure "more"? This is not for one moment to disagree with Jim, or question his assertion but, rather, to explore its extent.
Our society (by which I probably mean something like ‘societies on the Anglo Saxon western liberal democratic industrial capitalist model’) is these days very much inclined to measure success and endeavour in terms of linear, single goal achievement. Woods and Armstrong are examples; so is Bill Gates. We like endeavours which are clear cut and easily pigeon holed. But why?
Why should an endeavour not be more complex, more multifaceted, more (old fashoned term, but no less valid for that) rounded?
Once a year, though not terribly interested in tennis per se, I watch parts of the Wimbledon season. Some of the most ‘successful’ contestants are the ones I would least like to be. Some, like Jelena Docic, Leyton Hewitt and the Williams sisters, are superbly good at their game ... but radiate a one dimensionality that gives me the shudders. Others like Lindsay Davenport, Roger Federer and Amélie Mauresmo, seem to me much more successful at being human beings – an endeavour which counts far more highly with me.
Of course, it is no more up to me than to anyone else to decide what is ‘success’ or ‘appropriate endeavour’. I don't suggest that Hewitt ought to downgrade tennis because I value something else ... on the contrary, I am suggesting that someone who chooses for themselves what single or multiple goals are important is much more successful than the person who has been focussed by others.
Does anyone remember Mary Hopkin, sweet voiced blonde singer on the cusp of the sixties and seventies? She had a smash top of the pops hit with Those Were the Days (six weeks at number one, twenty one weeks in the chart, in the latter half of 1968); she stood on the threshold of what the world sees as big time success, and looked at it; then she turned around, said "no thank you" and walked away to a different life. She is, in my eyes, a far greater success than her many contemporaries who went on to adulation, fame, wealth.
And what about the polymath who loves both cycling and poetry, so gives time to both and never reaches the world's summits ... but gives everything to doing both as fully as the split allows? Or the parent who steps aside from crucial career years to become successful in a child's eyes and thereby loses the world's crown?
Lenny James, one of Britain's best respected actors, claims that people like him are not good rôle models for young black men. Why? Because, he says, holding up him or Lennox Lewis as rôle models simply reinforces the idea that to be successful you must be a famous actor or boxer. Dads who go to work each day, love their wives and kids, see their families grow up – those, says James, are the true rôle models. I agree with him; giving everything you have to being yourself quietly, out of sight, unnoticed, is just as valuable as doing it in the bright lights and roaring crowds of an international stage.
I fully agree with Jim that most of us could be so much more if we only decided to be; but I cannot see Woods or Armstrong as the models for what ‘so much more’ might look like.
- Read a related post by Jim Putnam
