Ali Thameem
One of the realities of playing sports in the 21st century is how exposed the athlete has become in the public eye. From the perspective of the fan, this image of the athlete is often distorted.
Courtesy of the internet, these distortions have only been amplified.
On the one hand, athletes are put on a pedestal by their fans. On the other hand, they are forced to deal with harmful criticism; their performances are questioned, minimized, misjudged – or worse, memeified – often by those who lack the discipline, resilience and sacrifice required of a great athlete.
To take part in sports in this day and age is to subject oneself to constant feedback. Yes, athletes do need feedback. But it must be sincere and constructive, and preferably come from a coach.
Just as importantly, they need to block out the noise from the sidelines. For the sake of their own sanity, athletes should refrain from giving in to the disingenuous opinions of the armchair pundits and the online trolls.
Unfortunately, there is no shortage of critics today. As we have seen this past week, every time our national team competes, social media is flooded with opinions of the armchair pundits. And as usual, the online trolls were having a field day.
The phenomenon of public scrutiny has been going on for ages. And hence, some of the great minds of the past had laid out timeless wisdom in dealing with such scrutiny.
Take, for instance, the advice in his book Meditations by Marcus Aurelius: “The opinion of ten thousand men is of no value if none of them know anything about the subject”. It is wiser to just ignore the trolls than to respond to them. The best revenge is to not be like them; to not let your critics determine your fate.
Perhaps this idea can best be told through a century-old speech, known as Citizenship in a Republic:
“It is not the critic who counts; nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt
In reality, neither the stubborn critic nor the unquestioning fan have a grasp on what it really means to be in the shoes of the athlete they obsess over.
The concept of the Man in the Arena, as told by Roosevelt, describes the strength of character needed to become great at just about anything, not just at sports. Roosevelt might have had the arena of politics in mind when he gave the speech, but it is as much relevant to sports.
Centuries before Roosevelt, the Roman and Greek philosophers now known as the Stoics, had written about ideas similar to that of the Man in the Arena.
“The Stoic philosophers drew constant parallels between the athlete and the philosopher, claiming that body and mind are one, and that mental dispositions are crucial for performance”, writes Ryan Holiday, author of multiples books on stoicism. “The healthy mind resembles the healthy body: it is strong, resilient, compact, agile, proportionate, and functional”, he pointed out. That is part of the reason why some of the top athletes adopt these principles in their lives.
But more importantly, elite athletes have taken up stoicism because it teaches the value of remaining unbothered by the opinions of others. They realize the importance of ignoring people who act and talk in bad faith, and just how damaging it is to give attention to those who are determined to see them stumble.
It is therefore crucial for athletes here in Maldivian sports, especially the up-and-coming athletes, to adopt the principle of the Man in the Arena – to not surrender to the harsh judgements inside the court of public opinion.
In its very essence, the Man in the Arena is about the athlete, as the fallible human that he or she is. It is about demonstrating what makes a virtuous sportsperson – the substance of their character, the display of humility when they win, and more importantly, their attitude in facing defeat.
For the sake of the next generation of sports stars in this country, let us celebrate the effort they put on the field. And for the greater good of Maldivian sports, let us shield our athletes from the toxic mentality of “those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat”.
