Fitness.ee readers are probably aware that I am a high school PE teacher. At the high school level, alongside many other interesting areas of sport, my lessons also cover elite sport: its nature, its pros and cons. After I have introduced the topic and we have analyzed it, the students give me feedback on what they have heard and read, naturally through a test. But this test isn’t so much a dry, strict check of knowledge as it is a way for students to share their own opinions and thoughts on the topic.
Why am I telling you this? It is important background for understanding where the impulse for this article came from. One of the eight questions I ask my students is the following:
The scenario is as follows: suppose you could choose, steer or determine your future. Would you pick the following option? You have a son who takes up cycling at the age of 10. By 17 he is at the top in Estonia, and by 23 among the world’s elite. He probably won’t get many free weekends, because it is training all the time and one training camp follows another. At 28 he is a five-time road race World Champion and a four-time European champion; at home he needs an entire room just for cups and trophies, and there isn’t a cycling fan who doesn’t know your son’s name and achievements. By the age of thirty, the boy is financially secure for the rest of his life, truly secure, so secure that his children wouldn’t need to worry much about money either. But… when the boy (the man) turns 32, a harsh reality emerges… his hip joints are so worn out that his career as a top athlete has to end, and not only that, both hip joints have to be replaced. Despite the joint replacements, it is possible to go on living a relatively good-quality life afterwards, but he has to say goodbye to elite sport, and prostheses are unavoidable.
If you could choose the above life path for your child, what would you do? Give a reasoned answer: why would you choose such a life, or why not? Justify it. Honor, fame, trophies, cups, lifelong financial security and satisfied ambitions versus hip prostheses? Justify your answer.
I will add just one thing: this scenario is pure fiction, and some details may not even add up, but it is simply a deliberately provoked illusion meant to create dilemmas.
I am not going to analyze my students’ answers in depth, but in short, the overall result is that 70% of high school students would actually choose the life path I constructed for their offspring. It is even interesting that the leaning goes in this direction. I will, however, share with you a kind of philosophical thought, which I also present to my students once I know their opinions. Live for nothing or die for something… naturally, I translate this sentence for them and unpack its meaning. It is aimed especially as food for thought for those who gave a resolute no to the scenario I described.
Where did I pick up this thought? Go ahead and say that Stallone’s “Rambo” is mere mindless killing, because that is exactly where I found this meaningful line, in “Rambo 4” to be precise. No point hiding it: this topic stems largely from my own inner reflections. I have thought a lot about whether and when I will start to regret everything I have done, how much more I would have to injure myself, what else would have to happen, or when the point will come at which I feel and think: was all of this necessary? On one hand, there are the hard workouts that nevertheless gave me positive satisfaction and self-fulfillment, all those achievements, records and feats in the gym, and reaching a relatively satisfactory level in Estonian bodybuilding. On the other hand, there are the numerous injuries, the constant exhaustion of the body, the harsh diets, and there is no point even talking about the financial return.
Right now I look back and regret nothing yet. But if I were to end up with hip prostheses… then I can’t be so sure anymore. Or what if it turns out that I have to spend all my old age in severe back pain and with joint inflammation affecting the entire body?
I think that reaching clarity on this is not a matter of days; it will take quite a few years of serious inner deliberation.
But what is clear, and what I also tell my students, is that, broadly speaking, everything really does come down to this philosophy: live for nothing or die for something.
The first choice, “Live for nothing…”, is the lifestyle of the grey masses. It simply means living your whole life without achieving anything. People live aimlessly, without fulfilling themselves, without striving for anything, and relatively emptily. And I don’t at all think that this self-fulfillment has to be of a sporting nature only.
The second choice, “Die for something…”, means taking risks, living for something, sacrificing yourself for something big and wearing yourself out, perhaps considerably faster than the typical “live for nothing” type. But in doing so you fulfill yourself in a way that gives you a great deal, and your goal gives your life a clear meaning. You may live 5, 10, 12 years less, but your life will have been brighter, more active and worth more than that of a creature who just drifts along emptily.
Which life should you prefer? Is it better, on your last day at 70 – 80 years old, to fold your hands on your chest and, looking back, remember nothing, because your life seems sad, trivial and unfulfilled? Or to take risks, sacrifice yourself, put up perhaps a few years of your life as a pledge, but be very content with yourself as a result, feel that your mission is accomplished, that you are happy and did what was your great passion and source of satisfaction?
Of course, “Die for something…” shouldn’t always be taken literally; those same replaced hip joints fall under it as well.
What is right? There is no single answer to this, and there is probably no right or wrong opinion, if only because everything is relative. What is big and worth the risk for one person won’t make another budge in the slightest. Everyone has to think these hard things through for themselves, and it is a deeply personal matter. To you, and to my students as well, I add that everything really is very relative. For quite a few people, things become clearer as soon as they have something to compare with. Let the first life path be the one I presented at the start, but for a second scenario let’s take this speculation: by the age of thirty, that same son is perhaps a “hopeless drunk”, whom you can regularly find asleep on the steps of the local village shop, having wet himself. No wife, no family, no job, no direction at all. Which one would you choose then?
While we’re on the subject, there’s one more thing I want to get straight. I’d like to say it to ordinary people, the ones who are far removed from sport and don’t know or care much about it. This same crowd often points a finger: “Look at you, slogging away at your training. You could get injured, and you will. Look, all that self-torture has left your back crooked and aching.” These same scoffers often advise young, motivated go-getters to steer clear of sport, effort and hard work, because you might hurt yourself, you might ruin your health. What’s more, if you spend your whole life training hard, you get used to eating a lot, and once your career is over you end up overweight, injured, with your muscle turning to fat, and so on.
But let me ask you a few questions, dear non-athletes, quite openly and, let’s be honest, rather ironically. Surely your back never aches? Surely you have no problems with excess weight or overeating? And you obviously have no joint complaints either, yet we can see very young people, “spared” from sport, buying Fastum, Deep Relief and Voltaren. Or how is it possible that you have lower back problems too, when you never had to lift heavy weights or withstand heavy training loads?
No need to belabor the point. As one saying puts it aptly: don’t arrive at the end of your life to discover you never actually lived. When the time comes to leave this world, many people look back and see the joy and beauty they missed out on, because they lacked the courage, the drive and the will.
Nobody escapes these aches, injuries, ailments and problems. The only difference is whether, on the last day, when we “fold our hands over our chest”, we have reason to be content when we look back on our lives.
Author: Janar Rückenberg
Come and train! ArtGym
