Article
Character
Comment
Sport
4 min read

When medal mania strikes

What turns a healthy motivation to excel into a toxic desperation to achieve?

Paul Valler is an executive coach and mentor. He is a former chair of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

A defeat fencer, withour a mask, turns angrily and roars.
Sandro Bazadze loses and loses it.

The brilliance and joy of medalists in the Paris Olympics is incredible to see.   Their discipline and sacrifices in training pay off in mesmerising displays of excellence and moments of pure elation.  Yet for there to be winners, there also must be losers, and there have been revealing moments of crushing disappointment which are never nice to see.  Sadly, Sandro Bazadze, world number one in fencing, could well go down in Olympic history as ‘the distraught loser who lost it’ in a furious rant at the referee as he was eliminated in the last 16 of the men’s sabre.  What is it that makes some people explode like that?  What is it that changes a healthy motivation to excel into a toxic desperation to achieve? What is it that changes a human being who is fully alive into an anxious person, so driven to succeed that they cannot bear to fail?   

That is likely why Bazadze erupted.  When he was denied success, he was denied who he thought he was. 

Few of us will achieve Olympic greatness, or the media recognition that redefines an athlete’s profile by forever linking their name to their achievement.  But we all have an inner tendency to believe that our value is based on what we can achieve.  We live in a culture that continually sends us the message that approval and worth depend on your results.   Many of us believe it, and then fall for a life of continuous intensity - a ‘cycle of grief’ as we fiercely strive for results, but mourn the loss of our inner peace.  And this cultural message of acceptance through achievement becomes really toxic when we begin to believe the lie that our identity is based on our performance.  That is likely why Bazadze erupted.  When he was denied success, he was denied who he thought he was.   “The referees have killed me”, he exclaimed. 

It’s not just athletes who are at risk from this.  Think about how our education system sends the same message about grades.  Thousands of teenagers suffer anxiety and mental illness as they face exams, because they believe their self-worth depends on their marks.  As GCSE results are published this month, thousands will be congratulated, but some will become depressed from failure.   

I know many workplaces where ‘performance management’ has become so oppressive that it leads to drivenness, perfectionism and burnout.  Even retirees can feel driven to complete their ‘bucket list’ before they die or become infirm.  So, people in all walks of life easily become addicted to the treadmill of ‘performance-based living’ and feel tired, trapped and troubled.  Labouring under the false belief that self-respect depends on achievement.   If you believe that, you cannot fail or even be ill without feeling deficient.    

There is a deep peace in that.  A freedom and resilience that makes it possible to compete without fear of failure. 

There is a better way.  We can choose to renounce that pernicious lie of a performance identity and affirm the deep truth that our real identity and significance is found in who we are as God’s much-loved children.  We can anchor our emotions in the security of that true identity.  If Bazadze had really understood and internalised this, he would still have been disappointed with the judges decision, but not destroyed by it.   

It is possible to decide to face up to the mania for results and our culture of continuous intensity.  That is what Sabbath is about – an act of resistance against a world dominated by the need for success.  God knows we need a break, not only to rest, but to recentre our hearts and minds on the truth.  We are loved unconditionally and don’t need to strive to achieve in order to be accepted and significant to God.  There is a deep peace in that.  A freedom and resilience that makes it possible to compete without fear of failure.  In the Bible, the word excellence is never applied to achievement, only to character, and the most excellent way is defined as love.  The Christian worldview celebrates great performance, but avoids making an idol of it, because that leads to a destructive obsession and to insecurity. 

Being secure in God is not about avoiding competition or pressure.   It is learning to pursue outstanding attainment free from any sense of our identity being stolen by our grades, or jobs, or whether other people approve of us or award us medals.  Top quality performance is superb and we should give our best with all our heart whatever we do.  But God is a God of grace, who loves, accepts and dignifies everyone unconditionally,  including those who didn’t even qualify for the Olympics, just as much as those who were on the rostrum.   

Article
Comment
Gaza
Middle East
5 min read

The human cost of the Israel-Gaza war

A veteran volunteer surgeon laments a well lived life.

Tim Goodacre is a reconstructive plastic surgeon, and volunteer at a hospital in Gaza.

A young doctor wearing scrubs smiles.
AbdulRahman at work.
Tim Goodacre.

The Israel-Gaza war rages on. Every few days a new tragedy hits our dulled senses. The West Bank and now Lebanon are getting dragged into the conflict. Palestinians and hostages continue to die, and hunger and disease threaten Gaza's displaced people as autumn and winter approach. 

Yet what is often lost is the human face of this conflict. This is the story of one such life. 

AbdulRahman was an intelligent, gentle and diligent young third year medical student in his early twenties, with judgement well beyond his peers. Towards the end of 2023, as the war spread more viciously towards southern Gaza, he was one a group of around 10 students who volunteered to join the team of health care workers at the European Gaza Hospital (EGH). I was volunteering there as a reconstructive plastic surgeon and and met him in the hospital.

Both medical schools in Gaza before the war began were in the north alongside their parent universities. They had been destroyed during the onslaught in the early months of fighting. In the southern town of Khan Younis, the EGH was the sole surviving operational facility to which the wounded could be transferred. It was overwhelmed by the vast numbers of families also taking refuge in what was deemed a safer space than most of the surrounding war zone.  

Many of the senior medical staff and surgeons had retreated to scattered parts of the strip, displaced frequently by the ever-moving conflict and driven by the need to support their families and stay together. ‘Live together-die together’ is an understandable feature in the horror show of war. Students, frequently left with no money or resources, started to volunteer to serve in hospitals in exchange for a little food and a sense of worth in the work they could offer. Any functioning hospital, if briefly ‘deconflicted’ so they could provide relatively safe care, found itself staffed by a disparate crew of local staff, displaced students, and an indeterminate number of more senior surgeons from both Gaza and humanitarian agencies. 

His desire to learn all that could be learnt, and to try to become the best surgeon possible, was palpable.

It was into this chaotic mix that young AbdulRahman walked having fled his family home in the east of Khan Younis in November 2023. A bright young man, with great aspirations to qualify as a surgeon and serve his community, he had spent the first six weeks of the war at home, unable to attend his medical school in Gaza City to the north, but working hard at his studies regardless, using every online and library resource available to him.  

At some point in late November, the battle zone moved south, and his family home was shelled along with many dwellings in the vicinity. Caught in crossfire, he sheltered in his neighbouring relative’s house after his parents and other close family had escaped to Rafah. 

Abdulrahman told me the dramatic story of his escape into the house in which he survived for a week alongside his relative’s family when I spoke to him in late January 2024. This young man not only survived an ordeal of indescribable fear and potential slaughter, but he was then arrested and interrogated in brutal fashion by IDF forces.  

On his release after a harrowing week, he made his way barefoot to the nearest hospital, which happened to be the EGH. In that place of safety, he was given food and water and after recuperation, volunteered to work alongside a reconstructive plastic and burns surgeon who had recently returned to Gaza after training in the UK. 

Although his family were still all alive in Rafah in displaced makeshift shelters, he opted to stay and throw his weight into whatever he could do to support the hospital whilst continuing to learn his profession as a doctor. Travelling occasionally at great personal risk to see and support his family, he devoted all his waking hours to surgical work in EGH operating theatres and wards. His excellent command of English made him immensely valuable to any visiting surgeons who managed to access Gaza during the war months. He was always cheerful, always willing to respond to requests for his time, however stressful the surrounding clamour from desperate patients and relatives might become.  

When his working day was done, in the middle of the night he would arrange for his fellow students to have informal teaching seminars from whoever he could cajole to deliver them, and would absorb knowledge and ideas about best practice like a sponge. His desire to learn all that could be learnt, and to try to become the best surgeon possible, was palpable.  

I had every intention of supporting this fine young man in achieving his professional aspirations by whatever means I could once a ceasefire arose and he could be brought safely to Europe to continue his training. 

In the last week of August, AbdulRahman was sheltering in a relative’s house in Khan Younis. In the small hours of the morning an Israeli attack was launched on the neighbourhood and the house took a direct hit. AbdulRahman was killed instantly. 

He knew, as does every Gazan in these troubled times, that nowhere was safe, and all lives in that tragic zone are at risk. His is a story of a life tragically cut short, of the randomness and destructiveness of war. His death strikes right at the heart of my hopes for the remnant of the fine young population of such a desperately sad nation state. He, and those like him, could have been at the heart of the re-building of Gaza, able to live in what now feels a far-off peace. I cannot translate this into anger, as AbdulRahman himself had a passionate concern for peace and reconciliation, and never once spoke to me in many conversations of support for Hamas, or of hatred for those who had destroyed his country.  

What can be done however, is to honour his life and commitment with similar tenacity in supporting the pursuit of peace, justice for his people, learning and education for the remnant of the nation, and reconstruction of a Palestine that can proudly and honourably reflect the finest values it possesses. AbdulRahman was a great Palestinian, and his all too short life was one which I want to celebrate as one of the finest I have seen in many students of the next generation of doctors. May he rest in peace, and may a lasting peace come quickly to Gaza, to all of Palestine and the whole of the Middle East.