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It’s Olympic season again. I love to watch the best of the best compete on the world stage. It’s exhilarating watching the YOUNG men and women push beyond their limits to achieve a moment of glory when a medal is placed on their shoulders and their national anthem is played, especially when it’s the “Star Spangled Banner”.

However, there’s a dark side to this modern gladiator spectacle. I suspect the effect of the dark side is more metastatic than we think and it goes far beyond the participants who don’t “make the cut”.

I heard a story the other day that got me thinking about this. It was about one of the swimmers competing in the nationals, the qualifying events for the Olympic team. I don’t recall the particular event, but she came in fourth and failed to qualify for the Paris Olympic team.

Her time in that event set a world record as the 5th-best time EVER for that event. She didn’t cut it.

I thought she felt like a LOSER. She is experiencing what the Wide World of Sports used to call “the agony of defeat” in their program intro in the 70’s. I think this stretches way beyond her. It radiates to all of us, I suspect. What kind of world have we become where SHE can feel like a loser?

Think about it.

Don’t you get a pang of “not-enough-ness” in your gut when you hear stories like that? How many excuses do you invent to assuage it?
Do you find yourself saying “She’ll come back (in four LONG years) even stronger!” We see evidence of that all the time, in every sport.

At the same time, is it possible there is a tape running in your head (I know there is in mine) that thinks you don’t fully comprehend what it would be like to be that good at anything? I’ve never been close enough to that greatness to know.

What is the long-term effect on our bodies when we spend time thinking we’re not enough?

Think about it.

The winners also suffer. After their moment of glory, they step into the “What have you done for me lately?” zone. They suffer from the fear of losing or not winning again. They become mentally and physically exhausted trying to hold on to the BEST status. They are surrounded by an entourage of promoters paying them money to stay in the #1 spot.

Eventually, they must fall from grace and we mourn their loss, but we don’t REALLY feel their pain. They are not allowed to grieve in solitude. We demand they share their agony with us. I think of some recent icons in the sports world in the spotlight for their falls. Rafa Nadal in the French Open last month. Tiger Woods hit again and again…first his decadence felled him. We fueled his trip down the decadence path with our admiration and belief he was above all human frailty in addition to being “the GOAT”. He continued to get hit by accident and dysfunctional relationships played out under the magnifying glass of the media feeding our voracious appetites for evidence of weakness among the greats.

We watch the performances as judges, detached from the wrenching emotional and physical toll on the individuals in the spotlight. We put the TV on pause while we fill and refill our plates and glasses to come back watch and judge some more.

I admit, that watching Joan Benoit win the Olympic gold medal in the marathon in Los Angeles in 1984 changed me. I can still see her in her white painter’s cap running her victory lap around the stadium, the first woman to win a gold medal in an Olympic marathon, the first time women ran marathons in the Olympics.

I was 30. I wasn’t an athlete by any stretch of the imagination and had just started jogging. After seeing Joan I became a runner who would compete. I ran my first 10K that year and it was exhilarating.

The difference was, I did it and I wasn’t trying to win the race. Finishing in the middle of the pack overall and higher in my age group ranking was ENOUGH.

Nearly 30 years later I ran my first marathon and finished. The thrill of crossing the finish line brought me to tears. The 34,999 others finishing before and after me were not my competition, they were my community. Winning was the triumph over my fears, limiting beliefs, and physical limitations.

There is a dark side to the drive to be the BEST I see playing out in social media.

This week, the Surgeon General announced there will be warning labels on social media urging limitation of use for young people due to the deleterious effects on mental health. Suicide, gun violence, and drug addiction are at all-time highs.

We need to pay attention. We, the older generation, Baby Boomers compete like Gladiators in the social media stadium.

Our categories are BEST Mother, BEST Father, BEST Husband, BEST Wife, BEST Grandchildren, BEST Marriage, BEST Children, BEST Trips/Vacations, MOST Beautiful (by age group), MOST Fit, BEST Cook and many more.

I see my friends posting their “achievements” and I plunge into the abyss of “not-enough-ness”. Do you?

“Not-enough-ness” drives me to numb (have a glass of wine, have a snack…comfort food), DISTRACT (watch TV, doom scroll), and RESIST (work out or work more, mainly don’t rest!).

I am changing. I will be a champion of ENOUGH. This is my new credo:

I am ENOUGH.
If I win or lose today, I am ENOUGH.
If I see or hear of someone I know achieving something great, I will not compete with them, I will wish them well and bestow a medal of ENOUGH on me.
I will stare disappointment in the eye, and feel it in my body without numbing, distracting, or resisting. I will congratulate myself on being ENOUGH.
I will look at my reflection with gratitude for being alive and ENOUGH.
I will be ENOUGH in any relationship, without shame.
I see others as ENOUGH regardless of their behavior and actions. I will forgive them with the understanding they are ENOUGH.
I know this is how God (insert your personal higher power) sees me.
I am ENOUGH.

This is Graceing Agefully™

With Love…you are ENOUGH, Jennifer