Simone Biles’ unexpected withdrawal from the Tokyo Olympics highlighted the issue of mental stress among top athletes. RAMESH BIJLANI writes on ways to ensure the mental well-being of sportspersons
Early in life, a potential athlete starts getting the taste of things to come. She enjoys getting applauded in school for what she loves to do, for something that for her is so easy and for other children almost impossible. However, what starts as an enjoyable play soon becomes an engrossing passion. Then comes the difficult choice, whether to upscale the passion to a profession or to let it wither away in favour of a conventional career. If it has to be a profession, what was once a hobby becomes a serious business.
Now begin years of gruelling practice under the supervision of a coach. Her life revolves around the practice. She still has classes and exams. There are demands that her family and friends continue to make. She forgets what taking a break means. Add to that the risk of sports injuries, which could kill her dreams in one stroke. The coronavirus pandemic brought in additional health risks and the uncertainty of whether the event she is training for will take place at all.
With the right combination of factors — physical, psychological and intangible — she emerges as the country’s representative at a prestigious event like the Olympics, leaving behind many wannabes.
Completely oblivious to the lop-sided life that she has lived for years, the country looks upon her as a medal-winning machine. Imagine ten such ‘machines’, all of them equally good, each representing her country, competing for three medals. Seven of them are sure to ‘fail’. Wishing otherwise will not help. That would be like asking for a train that has no coaches at the rear, because the rear coaches are the ones most vulnerable to derailment.
But here we are talking of neither machines nor trains but human beings who think and feel like any of us. The result is enormous uncertainty, leading to intense anxiety. Anxiety has a way of triggering reverberating cycles of pessimism. Recurrent cycles of pessimism can lead to depression even before the person has failed to deliver what was expected of her. Thus, the basic type of stress among top sportspersons is anxiety.
Anxiety results from the gap between expectations and the perceived likelihood of the expectations being fulfilled. Anxiety is not restricted to sportspersons but is more likely and more intense in their case, because the expectations are high and the likelihood of the expectations being fulfilled very low and uncertain. Therefore, it becomes all the more important for them to know themselves and to understand life better. A person is much more than a sportsperson, and life is more than winning medals.
The purpose of life is to grow and evolve into a better person. From this purpose, which is the true agenda of life, there is no retirement. And, to fulfil this purpose of life, all life is an opportunity. That is what Sri Aurobindo meant when he said, “All life is yog.” And, sportspersons have used life for practicing ‘yog’, as happened in the Tokyo Olympics when Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar gave up the opportunity for getting the gold medal alone and opted to share it with Italy’s Gianmarco Tamberi. Without perhaps realising it, Simone Biles has also grown spiritually by talking about her mental distress, and drawing public attention to this hidden spot in sports.
Spiritual life is essentially looking beyond oneself. On the other hand, exclusive attention to oneself is a sure prescription for depression. The Mother has called depression “the sign of an acute egoism.” This larger picture is all the more important for sportspersons to understand, who have invested all they have in a career full of extremes of expectations as well as uncertainties, a career from which early retirement is the norm, and an interruption at any stage due to an injury, a serious possibility. To expect mere humans to be able to deal with this unenviable combination entirely on their own is as unkind as it is unrealistic. As a society, our duty to understand and empathise with them far outweighs their patriotic duty to return with a medal. ■
Former AIIMS professor, Ramesh Bijlani is a seeker with Sri Aurobindo Ashram
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