Going for the Gold

The Real Lesson of Michael Phelps

“I want you guys to know.  I just became the most decorated athlete ever.  I want to thank you guys.”

His teammates were shocked.  “We are usually thanking him.” 

Phelps had just won his 19^th Olympic medal and overtook Latynina , Soviet Gymnast from 48 years ago.  Put another way—if Phelps were a country, he’d be #51 in the all time medal count.

 The achievement is unparalleled for Olympic competition.  Nobody should take Phelps’ remarks to task. Truth is that any “little” person can tear at a “big” person’s accomplishments.  It’s called the cheap seats. 

However, the quotation asks us all a #1 question worth at least a gold medal—what do you want to achieve? Are you in competition with yourself to reach some goal?  Congratulations, Michael, for attaining your goal of the most decorated Olympic athlete.  

I know another story.  A young man name named Fred had a terrible accident.  He fell into a fabric weaver for rugs.  It shredded his leg.  I was working that floor and was asked to help him to get ready mentally for the amputation of his leg.  His history was intense fear of even the dentist for which he took medication.  

All I can tell you is that offered myself, he hung on to me, and went into that surgery with my promise to be there when he woke up.  And I was there when he wrapped his arms around me, soaked my shirt with tears as he cried out—“They cut it off!  They really cut it off!” 

 

What kind of courage does it take to learn how to walk again?  How much self-esteem to respect yourself so that you will accept this loss? We can ask all the questions we want, but there was nothing more daunting than the doubt of Fred and his courage to overcome it.  

On the way home for Thanksgiving, I stopped at his home in rural North Carolina. Guess who walked to the door to greet me?  Fred had to compete with is fears and self-doubt to walk again.  Give him the gold medal for that race against himself.  Forever will I remember that we can grow our limbs back, the spirit of them anyway, and can learn to walk. Handicaps just may be what we do to ourselves. 

Aren't we all trying to walk again after suffering a loss?  The hope of loss is what we gain that never could have been there before.  The lesson of Fred came back to me when I lost a close friend.  It felt like an amputation. In the grieving process, I learned that I could grow another spirit, death giving way to life, and that my spirit could walk again. So part of my poem recalled the experience with Fred and the lesson he taught me.  

Thanks, Fred

July, 1977

So it took that ordinary teenager to teach me,

This extraordinary lesson, what I saw on the

Day of Thanksgiving, when Fred  stood up,

On a fake leg and walked across the room

To me, carrying the gift of a spirit that grew

A new leg from where the old one was torn

Off to give me hope that I too shall walk

Again from where my flesh was cut off.