An Ordinary Life


July 18th, 2008, a Friday

What's goin' on with these athletes of a certain age who are having their moments, long after their heyday has come and gone?  This weekend it's Greg Norman, the golfer, doing well at the British Open.  I remember years ago watching him lose major tournaments in such heartbreaking fashion that you felt nothing but sympathy for the guy.  Now that I think back, its hard to imagine feeling too much sympathy for someone who has so much.  I mean why do you feel bad when he just doesn't get absolutely everything he wants in life?  How many of us really do?  And yet we root for those who seem to have it all to have even more.  (That's worthy of further analysis right there.  Maybe for another blog day.)  Back to Greggie.  So legend has it that he met Chrissie (Evert, of course, the icy tennis queen) and they fell hard for each other.  There were the testy problems of getting out of other marriages, giving away a lot of money and property, and stuff like that so they could be together forever.  Well, you have to admit at their age, there is at least a better chance of forever than if they got married young and faced a longer future.  That's cut in half now.  Sort of like a head start.  But Greggie and Chrissie have both had storied sports careers so they must understand each other.  So why then do celebrities seem to have such a hard time sticking it out?  (I'll bet if they had gotten married when they were young rising stars they wouldn't be together today.)  They had a big, very expensive wedding, more than a mil, so now they are sure to be happy.  (I heard most of the wedding budget was spent on security and you have to ask yourself whether that was really necessary or whether they just like to think it was.)  And I am sure Chrissie is at the British Open quietly cheering on her man who is desperately trying to be cool out there as if it's just another tournament.  If he allowed himself to even imagine winning the British Open at age 53, and having Chrissie by his side, he wouldn't even be able to swing the club.  One thing is for sure, he keeps himself in real good shape.

As does Ms. Dara Torres.  Who doesn't know her story now with the enormous press she is getting for her amazing swimming accomplishments in her goal to make a 5th Olympic team at age 41.  Well, she did make the team in two distances but dropped out of the 100 to concentrate on the 50 meter sprint, one lap hauling ass all out, for which she swam record time in the trials.  How does she do it, they all say?  Well, the answer is available if you look closely.  She supposedly has the perfect swim body using all kinds of technical standards involving wingspan, height, hip rotation and other stuff that God personally gave her.  To hear her significant other (male and father of her 2 year old daughter) tell it, she is the most competitive woman on the planet so she is blessed with extraordinary motivation.  (Some would say that is God given as well.  At least it would be said by those who aren't all that motivated.)  And she has stayed in great competitive shape throughout her long career which spans her entire adult life meaning she has great workout habits and dietary discipline (although I'm not sure she is eating food at all these days to look at her body).  (Oh, on that dietary discipline thing, she did have an eating disorder so I guess you could say that is dietary discipline run amok.)  And she has two "stretchers" and a swim coach and a strength coach and most likely great child care and no worries about income so she has the luxury of training full time.  Being born into a family with lots of money doesn't hurt the cause.  So she has everything going in her favor but she still has to do it.  Now her naysayers scream that she must be doping even though she has voluntarily submitted to sophisticated drug testing to quiet those inevitable rumors.  You go, Dara.  Make all us old broads proud.  Teddy bears included.

I think I will pass on the natural inclination to add Brett Favre to the mix here in today's blog.  He is the aging quarterback who tearfully retired last season but realizes now that he didn't really mean it.  How feminine of him.  Cry and then say never mind.  Can you believe it?  His old team wasn't all that happy to hear of his change of heart.  Now everything is a big mess and all played out in public.  Maybe Brett should just cry some more, throw a snit fit, and then change his mind again.  That would make him back to retired and we would all be put out of our misery.    

So how does all this affect us baby boomers who see our own going out there and moving the goal posts to older is better with seemingly no end to what we can accomplish in our special years.  Is older really better?  Is 50 the new 30?  Well, here's how I look at it.  When you are young, the body looks and works a lot better but you have absolutely no concept of how it isn't going to work and look like that forever.  I mean you've never been in your body when it didn't work like that.  How could you really know?  It's that having no concept thing that exemplifies youth.  Clueless for the most part.  You don't always want to get up and work that hard, you want to go to McDonald's instead of eat the lean chicken and cottage cheese that's on your training regimen, and you want to go out with your friends at night and drink a little too much but because you're young you can still bounce back early the next morning for practice.  (Sadly, that is probably how a lot of young people realize they're not young anymore.  When the hangovers take longer to evaporate.)   When you're older, you have to take much better care of your body but you like the results so much that you are willing to make the sacrifice because it is literally the only way to have that flat stomach (excluding the plastic surgeon, of course, but that is also another blog).  You go to your workout because you can and you have a great appreciation for the things your body can still do.  So everything has so much more meaning.  It might even be just great to be there, even if you don't win.  Just to make the team.  And that enjoyment and lack of pressure can translate to great performance.

The upcoming Olympics will be watched by hundreds of millions of people over the course of the games.  Some will drink beer and say "I could do that, it doesn't look that hard".  Others will wistfully remember that they were good athletes in their youth but not quite good enough and it will make them sad and maybe even depressed at their life passing them by without ever having had the opportunity to grab the golden ring.  Lots of us will ask "what makes a person take up a sport like that, I mean how do they get into it".  We will feel that patriotic pride and yell, "yeah, go USA".  But deep inside we will know that the individual sacrifice and commitment it takes to get to that moment is beyond the comprehension of most of us.  And if pressed, we would say it probably isn't worth it.  I mean, it steals your youth and then your future becomes a memory of your past.  And that's best case scenario.  Don't forget those athletes who finished third at the swimming trials by one one hundredth of a second and dont make the team, nameless to most of us.  (Not to mention that the reason we only take two swimmers now is because the US was winning all three medals so often, they wanted to give others a chance.  So our third finsiher who now doesn't make the team, is likely to swim faster than the Olympic Bronze Medalist from another country.  That could be hard to take.)  It's cool to say you've done it, made the effort, but its ok that you didn't.  There are many ways to create a rich, rewarding life and down the road, the less flashy ways might turn out to be the very best of all. 

GR