It is Olympic time again, and it is the only time I can stand to spend several hours before the television. I soak up the over-reach, the hyper nationalism, the tributes to excellence, and often go to bed with a fantasy or two about a different life, one in which I had dedicated myself to, say, cross-country skiing and became the first US athlete to stand on the podium for gold in the 30 km combination race.
Such dreams of glory! Except that I never once gave a thought to professional or Olympian sports. My father egged me on a little and I retreated, preferring a hike in the mountains to pushing a training sled in football camp. Tennis players wore goofy shoes and shorts, skiing was too expensive, skating, we had no rink, and so on, but it didn't matter - it was never in me.
Not so with the Olympiads. Again and again they profile them on TV and we find again and again that they were driven to their sport at a very early age, not by a nagging mom, but just because. Of the medal winning skating pairs, for instance, NBC profiled the man in the pair, showing him in skates and uniform and costume from age 9, already proficient in figure skating and hockey. At that age, he decided on doing pairs, and preferred to wear all black. His mother told him, no, he had to decide between ruffles or stones. His mother said he grimaced and said, "stones I guess." At that age, I would have run away in a panic. Worse, he had to decide on a female partner, and found one on the second try (on the first try, the girl didn't like holding hands with a boy.) She was 7 or 8, and they knew withing two days that they were a match - and have continued as a pair to this Olympics 17 years later. How could he (I am focusing on the boy now) have made such compromises at his age (girls and stones)? How could he have picked such a sport? How did he stick with it through childhood and adolescence?
We all have known people who have known what they would be from an early age and reached their goal. My sister was driven - and I mean driven - to be an actress, and that's what she does (although she directs now). Then there are those who know what they want but are distracted for some reason or another; a friend of mine wanted to be a journalist, was a natural at it, and got a job in it after college. After a few years, he also decided to get married and found that his salary would be too low, and he left for an unfulfilling life in the business world - but with a wife and children. Then there are those like me, who wanted to do many things but could not settle on anything until later (in my case, I fulfilled that late desire, but could find no work in my chosen field). I have to say that I have always written but was discouraged from it, nearly daily, by my father. Fate had another idea, and here I write. But I am not among those chosen as if by magic to do something. Nothing stops these people. They are, it seems, born with it, as a beagle is born with the need and desire to chase rabbits. Nothing can or will change that need and desire.
I am sure there have been many psychological profiles on these people, and many theories made that seem conclusive. Mozart, for instance, had a musician father who willed him to practice; but many have had parents who have tried to impose their will on their children. If it is something that requires excellence, it seldom if ever works - that must come from within. But where does this "within" come from?
In the social sciences, we speak of "nature and nurture" as the two prongs that push us towards certain behaviors and professions. Both play a part, certainly - the skater could not have been the skater without the invention of skates - and maybe it was a TV presentation that got him interested in the first place. Of course, he or she would also have to have the knack - thus nurture and nature come into play. But most of us know that there is something more. In the old days, and still now among the religious, there is the idea of a "calling." Often this is not a profession, but a design - let's say, to have a business, raise children, and start a food or education program. But this calling is most pronounced by those who are called to a profession. They are usually the most successful at what they do. It is their rabbit to chase. And it comes from another source, neither nature or nurture. One does not have to point to a particular god (although you can - God by any other name is still beyond comprehension) to accept this. Rather, it is our doppelganger, our hidden self that wishes to be noticed in the physical world. We saw it in the discussion on genius, and we see how it is being denied, absorbed by a democratizing principle that seeks to eliminate the idea by spreading it about in equal portions to everyone, making of it nothing. But everyone does have this side, and it is not nothing. For some, rather, it is their time to shine; for others, apparently not. Why this is so is as unanswerable as fate itself.
But for most of us, we at least have our overall "design." It can be used for selfish or social purposes (the mechanic can be a good mechanic or he can become a very bad motorcycle gang member); and it can come from fate - or circumstances - rather than a burning, needful desire. I think that would probably describe most of us, but it is no small thing. Fate works from birth, it seems, on the truly inspired and gifted, while on the rest of us, it works through our lives, over the years. I am only now beginning to understand what nearly every very old person says near the end of his life: "I wouldn't change a thing." It still is almost hard to believe, but it is the essence of wisdom. They see in fate the workings out of their own particular design, and as small as that might seem to everyone else, they see it for a whole world, the world that has been their life, and as such something of great importance, and they are right. FK
Such dreams of glory! Except that I never once gave a thought to professional or Olympian sports. My father egged me on a little and I retreated, preferring a hike in the mountains to pushing a training sled in football camp. Tennis players wore goofy shoes and shorts, skiing was too expensive, skating, we had no rink, and so on, but it didn't matter - it was never in me.
Not so with the Olympiads. Again and again they profile them on TV and we find again and again that they were driven to their sport at a very early age, not by a nagging mom, but just because. Of the medal winning skating pairs, for instance, NBC profiled the man in the pair, showing him in skates and uniform and costume from age 9, already proficient in figure skating and hockey. At that age, he decided on doing pairs, and preferred to wear all black. His mother told him, no, he had to decide between ruffles or stones. His mother said he grimaced and said, "stones I guess." At that age, I would have run away in a panic. Worse, he had to decide on a female partner, and found one on the second try (on the first try, the girl didn't like holding hands with a boy.) She was 7 or 8, and they knew withing two days that they were a match - and have continued as a pair to this Olympics 17 years later. How could he (I am focusing on the boy now) have made such compromises at his age (girls and stones)? How could he have picked such a sport? How did he stick with it through childhood and adolescence?
We all have known people who have known what they would be from an early age and reached their goal. My sister was driven - and I mean driven - to be an actress, and that's what she does (although she directs now). Then there are those who know what they want but are distracted for some reason or another; a friend of mine wanted to be a journalist, was a natural at it, and got a job in it after college. After a few years, he also decided to get married and found that his salary would be too low, and he left for an unfulfilling life in the business world - but with a wife and children. Then there are those like me, who wanted to do many things but could not settle on anything until later (in my case, I fulfilled that late desire, but could find no work in my chosen field). I have to say that I have always written but was discouraged from it, nearly daily, by my father. Fate had another idea, and here I write. But I am not among those chosen as if by magic to do something. Nothing stops these people. They are, it seems, born with it, as a beagle is born with the need and desire to chase rabbits. Nothing can or will change that need and desire.
I am sure there have been many psychological profiles on these people, and many theories made that seem conclusive. Mozart, for instance, had a musician father who willed him to practice; but many have had parents who have tried to impose their will on their children. If it is something that requires excellence, it seldom if ever works - that must come from within. But where does this "within" come from?
In the social sciences, we speak of "nature and nurture" as the two prongs that push us towards certain behaviors and professions. Both play a part, certainly - the skater could not have been the skater without the invention of skates - and maybe it was a TV presentation that got him interested in the first place. Of course, he or she would also have to have the knack - thus nurture and nature come into play. But most of us know that there is something more. In the old days, and still now among the religious, there is the idea of a "calling." Often this is not a profession, but a design - let's say, to have a business, raise children, and start a food or education program. But this calling is most pronounced by those who are called to a profession. They are usually the most successful at what they do. It is their rabbit to chase. And it comes from another source, neither nature or nurture. One does not have to point to a particular god (although you can - God by any other name is still beyond comprehension) to accept this. Rather, it is our doppelganger, our hidden self that wishes to be noticed in the physical world. We saw it in the discussion on genius, and we see how it is being denied, absorbed by a democratizing principle that seeks to eliminate the idea by spreading it about in equal portions to everyone, making of it nothing. But everyone does have this side, and it is not nothing. For some, rather, it is their time to shine; for others, apparently not. Why this is so is as unanswerable as fate itself.
But for most of us, we at least have our overall "design." It can be used for selfish or social purposes (the mechanic can be a good mechanic or he can become a very bad motorcycle gang member); and it can come from fate - or circumstances - rather than a burning, needful desire. I think that would probably describe most of us, but it is no small thing. Fate works from birth, it seems, on the truly inspired and gifted, while on the rest of us, it works through our lives, over the years. I am only now beginning to understand what nearly every very old person says near the end of his life: "I wouldn't change a thing." It still is almost hard to believe, but it is the essence of wisdom. They see in fate the workings out of their own particular design, and as small as that might seem to everyone else, they see it for a whole world, the world that has been their life, and as such something of great importance, and they are right. FK
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