Distractions welcome for an athlete missing his raison d'etre
TIMOTHY BOYLE
February 14, 2010
I HAVE spent more than a third of my life training as a professional athlete and nearly all my life with the pursuit of sport as my purpose.
There were times when I found it profoundly difficult. I can recall having to convince myself of how powerful and strong I was, so as to avoid the shame of stopping midway through a running session to rest. In sport, the ignominious ego is far more powerful than the pain of training. Purpose, for athletes who are professional, or are driven by their sport, is personified by the struggle to be better. Their attention seldom rests on anything other than their cause: Be the best and if you can't be that, then try harder.
This summer is the first I can remember when I'm not training for, looking forward to, or dreaming of the virtues of sporting glory. Never has the immediacy of my purpose or sense-of-self been so withdrawn and unspoken than without sport.
When all is laid bare, there's a truism about the nature of elite sports people, a challenge posed to the ego from which all else they present can be attributed.
''You're not good enough'', the mind says, and the ego answers, ''Yes I am, I'll prove it.''
When athletes are engaged in that struggle, all the world fades for them and with it, so too do the pangs of anxiety that seem to settle on those who have finished in their sport.
Struggle is the sportsperson's food and drink; it's their refuge. In it, life is simple. Purpose for them is omnipresent and training hard is a meditation - the pressure of it is posthumously recognised as a gift at the end of life in sport.
When that challenge is taken from an athlete and he's shown a door back into the world, he's like a man just woken into a great blackness, groping the air about him for reference, for purpose. All the previous measures of one's self begin to recede and diminish.
Most immediate is the body's physical change. It's hard to accept the speed at which the butterfly you created through great effort returns to its sluggish form with no effort to speak of. I was surprised at how little enthusiasm I had for training once I'd finished as an athlete. I realised I'd never done physical activity simply under the premise of health and wellbeing. It had always been just a by-product of the ego's struggle for recognition and status.
Health and wellbeing is still coming a distant second for me as a reason for training. It was only vanity that stirred me back into exercise. I couldn't handle such a sudden change in body aesthetics. I couldn't stand looking in the mirror and feeling normal again. As an athlete I can remember feeling so attuned to my body, and so wired with the energy of training, that I had to resist the urge to break into a jog while walking down the road for milk. Running for me now, feels like something to be done out of necessity - as you might run being chased by a bear, or when late for a train.
I no longer associate my sense of self with athleticism. Perhaps it's understandable, to let the body slide back into normalcy. It's like returning your phone to its default settings when it breaks. With time, comes a gradual decline in the self-importance one claims as an athlete, and the ego too must deflate to its natural size to make way for other possibilities.
Particularly in the AFL, the awareness of this transition back into the world and its difficulty has never been greater. There are programs and concepts designed with great thought to assist athletes in this process. But it's difficult to convince someone of a new purpose while they're grieving for the one that's been with them as long as their shadow.
There are measures of distraction that keep the world in colour for newly finished athletes.
Last week, I took a job from a friend with a pizza restaurant. He's teaching me how to work the wood-fired oven and keep the pizzas from burning while they cook. At one point, I got lost in the glow of the coals thinking about my life.
Just then I heard a voice I hadn't heard in a while say: ''You can't brown the edges of this pizza perfectly on all sides.''
When the first perfect pizza came out, I looked over my shoulder feeling satisfied and half expecting someone to be standing there. There was no one there - only me, in a silent conversation with my ego.
■ Timothy Boyle played 31 games for Hawthorn from 2005 to 2008.
http://www.theage.com.au/afl/afl-news/distractions-welcome-for-an-athlete-missing-his-raison-detre-20100213-nyjo.html
