If you attended American grade school you probably remember the blackboards, topped with long card stock banners depicting the alphabet in red letters as print and cursive, complete with little arrows explaining the best way to render each character. But just as ubiquitous was the bulletin board, usually filled with thematic collages depicting current holidays or collections of student work.
The boards at my school also sported a rotating roster of GOOD EXAMPLES, cardboard cutouts of American Heroes, the hard working folks we were supposed to STRIVE TO BE.
Abraham Lincoln. George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson.
Martin Luther King, George Washington Carver, Harriet Tubman.
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Neil Armstrong.
No matter who the featured icons were on this bulletin board, the title, in carefully cut out red construction paper letters, remained the same –
“Good Better Best: Never let it Rest, until your Good becomes Better, and your Better becomes Best.”
I mean, that’s a lot of pressure for six year olds, and the averages are crazy - it doesn’t take math into account at all. I’m incredibly lucky that my grade school made a clear distinction between personal best and outwardly competitive best; it was really motivating to try to do our best, to be the best we’d ever been, to best our last achievement. But to be THE best was a radical perversion of the idea, leading to a treadmill of competition against every other human being on the planet.
It’s Olympics time again.
The experience of being an Olympic level athlete must be incredible. I myself find it hard to imagine as my body type is very distant from that level of pliability, but I admire them greatly and watch absolutely in awe of the years of training which led to this moment.
At least once a year our grade school bulletin board had Sports Heroes. Jesse Owens made the list in fourth grade. (His story was a little confusing because we hadn’t learned a great deal about World War II yet; he ran the fastest and we won and the bad guys were super upset about it, something like that.)
Not every athlete can take home Olympic gold. Gold medal winners are inspiring, and will be used to motivate children around the world. But if you are from a country that doesn’t have a winner, whose photo do you put up? What if your nation’s hero came in fourth? - not a bad showing in a worldwide contest. Do you, as an trainer, speak of how hard they tried, how proud you nation should be?
The answer most likely is no, because as all the Jackson brothers besides Michael can tell you, there is no second place. You win, or you do not. Best is a singular title reserved for one person per genre. It’s the only thing you’re supposed to want, the One True Goal. Win or go home.
Except, maybe not straight home.
Last Olympics (or maybe the Olympics before) I heard an interesting story about Olympic Village and what happens after each event: while the medal recipients are whisked away to photo shoots and morning tv shows and product placement contracts, the “losers” come back to Olympic Village and become fans, just like us at home. Wiping tears of disappointment from their eyes, after a lifetime of careful eating, early bedtimes and far too early mornings, and limited contact with anyone not associated with either their home or gym, they find themselves surrounded by a Noah’s Arc of the most fit people in the world, with no real plans for the next couple of days.
Relieved of the responsibility of competition, they bond and mingle.
Now there’s a unique experience, an opportunity that may lean a bit toward bacchanalia, but truly creates an Olympic Village. What sort of conversations can you have with a table of people from around the world? The gold medal winners don’t get that.
Of course, America celebrates not only the top, but the bottom of scales as well, which is why “the worst” has become a distinction which some people also strive for, having faced the reality that they’ll never be the best at something, coupled with the comforting fact that THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS BAD PRESS. Attention is measured in absolute value.
Alas, there is the middle, a wonderfully broad place, because there is only one best, and one worst, and if you don’t hold the distinction of being one of those you are guaranteed a comfy place right smack dab with everyone else. I’d love to be at a bar where those middle athletes go, drinking deeply and laughing loudly, no medals to insure, no endorsement legal issues to sort out.
No matter what we do, we are always the best at being ourselves. We always take home the Gold Medal in Us. Isn’t that nice?
Of course, due to the lack of participants in the category, we’re always the "worst" us, too. That’s just math.
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