This is a tough one.
Today I was writing for a website and wanted to quote Lance Armstrong. Specifically, I wanted to quote the title of his autobiography “It’s not about the bike” and needed to verify the exact words he used. [The book’s full title is It’s Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life by Lance Armstrong and Sally Jenkins.]
When I googled his name to find the quote, a few other quotes came up, some of them suitably bad-ass:
“Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.” (I especially like that one.)
“A boo is a lot louder than a cheer.” (This has become an established fact of psychology, that humans seem to give significantly more attention to the negative and frightening than we do to the positive and comforting.)
“If you ever get a second chance for something, you’ve got to go all the way.” (I’ll take that on face value. I can’t think of too many second chances I’ve gotten.)
I’m a cyclist and have competed in after-school sports since I was 9 years old, beginning with a little kids ice hockey league in Chicago. I was so excited the night before my first practice that I went to bed wearing all my hockey clothes, including my protective cup. Over forty years later I still remember how uncomfortable it was to lie in bed wearing a cup. I took it off at some point during the night.
Anyway, I have deep feelings about fairness in competition. I’m among those who feels very disappointed that Mr. Armstrong doped to win Le Tour de France. The need to cheat and cheaters themselves seem like formidable evidence of a hostile universe.
But surely there’s something here of the friendly?
Well, what I found inspiring about Armstrong hasn’t changed: grit, tenacity, courage, willingness to do whatever it takes to win, willingness to take risks. But I’m not sure any of these are evidence of a friendly universe. If anything, they’re instructions for handling a hostile zone. It feels right that it’s admirable to go to the limit, however only to the limit, only to the boundary. Going beyond the boundary of fair is wrong. Cheating. Unfriendly.
But maybe the evidence of the friendly universe here is inspiration. That we have an ability to look outside of ourselves and see examples of what we think we’d like to achieve, or how we’d like to behave (the flip side of disappointment). When we’re low on self-motivation and see nothing around us for encouragement, we can pick up a book or pull up a website about an individual who did something incredible, all due to sheer grit and going to our personal limits. The inspiring story is that we — any and all of us — can win “simply” by doing what any of us have the capacity to do: work incredibly hard and never give up.
OK, so, here’s the evidence of a friendly universe: inspiring stories. Even if it’s inspiration to be bad-ass, that’s okay.
I wonder if some of the ancient cave paintings, like at Lascaux, are inspiring stories, maybe even exaggerations of the truth intended to inspire the younger generation, maybe the teenagers, to get out and do something — anything — that they can brag about.
Frrriendly: inspiring stories.
Q