"Excuses are for wusses."
That's the in-your-face statement Iowa wrestler Spencer Lee made to TV cameras following his revealing that he had just won the national championship with a torn ACL. I assume there will be t-shirts inscribed with those proud words, and the video clip has gone far beyond the small band of devoted wrestling fans across the nation.
Of course, those sorts of statements are easier to say when you have just overcome the sort of injury and pain that would leave most of us hospitalized. The guy appears to have an iron will to match his wrestling prowess.
Those four words have a John Wayne ring to them, extolling rugged individualism (which lies at the heart of the wrestling mindset) and the "no excuses" persona that most people admire.
There really are excuses for the times we encounter challenges or failure, and some are clearly more compelling than others. But many of our favorite stories involve someone overcoming obstacles and refusing to fall back on even the best excuses.
This sort of rising above reasonable expectations happens all the time in sports, which is one reason we find sports so compelling. If the story we want to tell is about a blessed athlete who has never encountered injury or losing or pain... well, that's not much of a story.
Remember what we had to memorize sometime in school: stories include setting, characters, challenge/obstacle, and resolution.
We are currently in the midst of spring sports "madness" and one reason we might be riveted to our screens to watch one basketball game after another is the surety that one team will win and one will lose, and that sheer talent and ability may not be enough.
Most of our lives are not like sporting events, with a clear winner and loser in the end. Sports are like heightened life. I'm not really a wrestling fan, despite my ties to Iowa, but it's tough not to admire a fellow human being who simply refused to be stopped or beaten.
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