What’s Simone Biles doing today?

How to live with winning and losing.

Julia Kendal

Juila is a writer and social justice advocate.

Simone's gold medal moment.

@simonebiles

I wonder about what Simone Biles is doing today. She is one of the many athletes whose Paris 2024 was about more than gold; it was about redemption. Now the Games are over, what happens to their restoration story?

The narrative about redemption seemed to dominate the headlines and linger in post-event interviews. Some Olympians came to the Games seeking it. Gymnast Rhys McClenaghan was tipped for gold in Tokyo 2020 but stumbled on the pommel horse, finishing in seventh place. In France, he climbed to the top of the podium.

Others completed a fall and rise within the two weeks themselves. Sprinter Jeremiah Azu had a faltering beginning to the Games, disqualified for a false start in the individual 100m heat. Just six days later he was clutching a bronze medal for the relay.

Then there are those like taekwondo athlete, Jade Jones, who also laboured for years and gave their all – but didn’t get the payoff that they sought. What does the story mean when it is unfulfilled? And when the Games are over, how do people live with winning and losing?

Into our messy, maybe frightening, sometimes ordinary, lives, we love a redemption story to brighten and neaten things up.

After years of professional procrastination, a few months ago I finally took the plunge and joined LinkedIn. An impressive feat, I know. It was driven by practicality; I was finishing a job as a climate policy advocate and making the leap into consultancy. But I’ve been fascinated to discover how people in my community, and millions of others, are sharing tender and vulnerable ideas and thoughts in this social workspace. They are coming with questions – what does success look like? How are you navigating your purpose in the day to day? What world do you want your children to inherit? – and gentle ideas about their answers.

People are asking about and reflecting on how to navigate winning, and losing, and living in the murky space in between.

This feels striking because one of the other prevalent stories many of us believe, maybe unconsciously, is that life will generally be good and any setbacks are the exception. Growing up in the Nineties the message seemed to be: the world is your oyster if you work for it. Put in the effort, and the losses will be few and the trajectory will be up.

But the last few years in particular – economic volatility, growing exposure of deep inequalities, the worsening climate crisis – hammer home that this is not reliably the case. No matter how much effort you put in, we rarely live through one type of season at a time. Joy and suffering co-exist. And amongst the highs and the lows, there is a whole lot of everyday living. Show up at the desk, the school gate, the supermarket.

Into our messy, maybe frightening, sometimes ordinary, lives, we love a redemption story to brighten and neaten things up.

The sting of winning or losing is softened when we stop ascribing all meaning to them, and instead cast them in the context of a wider story.

But part of the problem with many of the redemption tales we share is that they rely on the person themselves to deliver their own restoration. They’ve had (and are perhaps blamed for) a fall from grace, and now it’s up to them to find it within themselves – their physical, mental and emotional capacity – to achieve restoration. That’s a heavy weight to put on anyone’s shoulders (however broad they may be).

And any redemption gained is fleeting. Medal winners talk about ‘gold medal syndrome’: the post-competition feeling of depression, loneliness and emptiness. For those athletes who’ve now headed home after fulfilling a salvation arc, is the emotional dip going to be even steeper, harder?

Most of us won’t be Olympians, despite how expertly we discuss the diving scores every four years, but that sense of deflation after achieving a long-sought goal can be resonant. We’ve strived and risked ourselves for something, only to find the aftertaste is a bit flat. That new job is good but flawed. Winning that award doesn’t stop a rejection landing in the inbox the next day. The house renovations are already showing cracks. Winning and losing are both transient. A redemption made ourselves rarely satisfies or lasts.

The sting of winning or losing is softened when we stop ascribing all meaning to them, and instead cast them in the context of a wider story. One that goes further than a single person or moment – a birth, a podium, a bonus. Such a story can speak beyond our own lives to the core challenges we face in the world: fairness into a broken economic system; peace instead of violence in our communities; flourishing, not escalating environmental crises.

During my years of climate advocacy, I have sometimes envied colleagues working on more tightly defined topics with the possibility (only fulfilled through huge amounts of wisdom and graft, of course) of winning. Change a law, solve a problem. As the climate gets warmer and more unpredictable, it’s easy to have a sense that, at best, you are just making things a little less bad. The wins are in the context of a lot of disappointments, and a whole lot more grey space in between.

But by being able to root my day to day in a bigger story, I can move forward with hope. Understanding our lives as part of an even greater narrative – the story of this world that God loves and sustains and restores – saves us from the pressure and heartache of trying to redeem our own lives. Instead, we can live them – the wins, the losses, and all the mundane moments in between – in light of that bigger story.

Looking at the world through the lens of God’s redemption story helps us to stay clear-sighted: celebrating the successes and not make them our whole world; naming the problems and still acting with hope and grit.

A redemption arc is a beautiful one. I want to hold onto that longing, but find it in a story that’s deeper, longer and richer than I can see. A story that lasts.

Article

Assisted dying

Comment

29 October 2024

4 min read

Assisted Dying logic makes perfect sense but imposes a dreadful dilemma

The case for assisted dying appeals to choice and autonomy, yet not all choices are good. It means vast numbers of people will face a terrible choice as their life nears its end.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A black and white picture shows a woman head and shoulders, she is looking up and to the side in an unsure way.

Anastasiya Badun on Unsplash.

Two broad cultural trends have led us to our current debate over assisted suicide.

One is the way consumer choice has come to be seen as the engine of successful economies. Emerging from Adam Smith’s theories of rational choice based on self-interest, given a boost by Reaganomics and Thatcherite thinking in the 1990s, the provision of a range of choice to the consumer is usually argued, with some logic, as key to the growth of western economies and the expansion of freedom.

The other is the notion of individual autonomy. Articulated especially in the past by figures such as John Locke and John Stuart Mill, the idea that individuals should be free to choose to dispose of their property, their time and their talents as they choose, as long as they don’t harm anyone else, has become standard moral fare in the modern world.

Put these two together, and the logic of assisted dying makes perfect sense. What can be wrong with offering someone a choice? Why should the state restrict individual freedom to end your life in the way you might decide to do so?

Yet expanding choice is not always good. Forcing an employee to choose between betraying a colleague or losing their job is not a fair choice. There are some choices that are unfair to impose upon people.

Assisted dying will lead us to this kind of choice. Imagine a woman in her eighties, living in a home which is her main financial asset, and which she hopes to leave to her children when she dies. She contracts Parkinson’s or dementia, which will not kill her for some time, but will severely limit her ability to live independently (and remember about of third of the UK population will need some kind of longer-term care assistance as we get older). At present, her only options are to be cared for by her children, or to sell her house to pay for professional care.

With the assisted suicide bill, a third option comes into play – to end it all early and save the family the hassle - and the money. If the bill passes, numerous elderly people will be faced with an awful dilemma. Do I stay alive, watch the kids’ inheritance disappear in care costs, or land myself on them for years, restricting their freedom by needing to care for me? Or do I call up the man with the tablets to finish it soon? Do I have a moral duty to end it all? At present, that is not a choice any old person has to make. If the bill passes, it will be one faced by numerous elderly, or disabled people across the country.

Even though the idea may have Christian roots, you don’t have to be religious to believe the vulnerable need to be protected.

Of course, supporters of the bill will say that the proposed plan only covers those who will die within six months, suffering from an “inevitably progressive condition which cannot be reversed by treatment.” Yet do we really think it will stay this way? Evidence from most other countries that have taken this route suggests that once the train leaves the station, the journey doesn’t end at the first stop - it usually carries on to the next. And the next. So, in Canada, a bill that initially allowed for something similar was changed within five years to simply requiring the patient to state they lived with an intolerable condition. From this year, there is a proposal on the table that says a doctor’s note saying you have a mental illness is enough. In the same time frame, 1,000 deaths by assisted dying in the first year has become 10,000 within five years, accounting for around 1 in 20 of all deaths in Canada right now. Some MPs in the UK are already arguing for a bill based on ‘unbearable suffering’ as the criterion. Once the train starts, there is no stopping it. The logic of individual choice and personal autonomy leads inexorably in that direction.

Of course, some people face severe pain and distress as they die, and everything within us cries out to relieve their suffering. Yet the question is what kind of society do we want to become? One where we deem some lives worth living and others not? Where we make numerous elderly people feel a burden to their families and feel a responsibility to die? In Oregon, where Assisted Dying is legal, almost half of those who opted for assisted dying cited fear of being a burden as a factor in their decision. Or would we prefer one where the common good is ultimately more important than individual choice, and where to protect the vulnerable, we find other ways to manage end of life pain, putting resources into developing palliative care and supporting families with dependent members – none of which will happen if the option of assisted dying is available.

Even though the idea may have Christian roots, you don’t have to be religious to believe the vulnerable need to be protected. Changing the law might seem a small step. After all, doctors routinely administer higher doses of morphine which alleviate pain and allow a natural death to take its course. Yet that is a humane and compassionate step to take. To confront numerous people, elderly, disabled and sick with a dreadful dilemma is one we should not impose upon them.