Poor Foundations

Over the weekend, I was spending Saturday to the best of my ability, working on a puzzle. While I work on puzzles, I usually like to listen to podcasts, audiobooks, music, or mindless sports. You heard that right: “mindless sports”. I’m talking about low-stakes, things that I don’t really care about, and have minimal moments of high energy. Here are a few examples: baseball, golf, figure skating, gymnastics. Saturday, it was figure skating. Ice dancing to be precise.

And this wasn’t just a regular ice dancing competition. This was the US Championships. Top finishers would get to go on to the World Championships. In an Olympic year, they get to go onto that event as well. So, it’s kind of a big deal. You could make fun of ice dancing, but I’d still like to see any guy in his armchair try to do what these folks do. It’s athletic, but it’s also artistic. I like it.

So, I was watching the US ice dancing championships while working on my puzzle. Finally, it got down to the last group, the top finishers to perform their final bit to decide what their placement would be. Throughout most of the broadcast, the commentators were talking about how the leading group was sick. They both had flu-like symptoms. Everyone was wondering whether they would compete or not. I have to admit, I was wondering too, but probably for different reasons than the commentators.

Sure enough, they took the ice, performed well, and won first place. This whole scenario made me think of two things:

1. This choice reveals a lot about the priorities of the athletes

2. Cultural norms are a poor foundation for your life.

I’ll take the second one first because it isn’t my main point and much easier to explain. Do you remember 2020? Remember how we were demonized and villainized for being in the presence of anyone after a mere sneeze brought on by springtime allergies? Remember how our humanity and integrity were questioned for safely spending time with other human beings? Remember how athletes had to sit out full games in the MLB and NFL for “flu-like” symptoms? 

Well, if you don’t, I do. And things are different today. 

Simply put, cultural norms bend and sway from year to year, day to day, even. What’s acceptable one year is unthinkable the next. I thought that, surely, in the post-Covid world, these athletes would bow out in the name of “safety”. But the only safety being discussed was their own! As in, would they fall and hurt themselves if they tried to perform while ill?

Attitudes surrounding sickness and, particularly, Covid, have shifted. They were not, as I dreamed in my worst moments, here to stay forever. They shifted, like just about every other cultural norm that I can think of. Because attitudes and ways of living shift so often, they’re not a very good thing to build your life upon. When the foundation of a building shifts, everything inside the building gets messed up and it could eventually fall down. Serious time and labor must be put in to correct it. If the foundation of your house shifted yearly, your house would not stand for very long. Neither will your life.

Back to the beginning (like Vizzini said!). Choosing to perform under such circumstances says a lot about the priorities of these two athletes. Before I get going, I’m not here to slam them personally. I’m here to slam the culture that led them to make the choice to perform while pretty sick. Here’s a bit of important context. This pair has been at the top of the ice dancing world for some time. They’ve won this title before, more than once (5 times, including Saturday). In fact, they’ve been dominant for so long that the commentators were talking about the pair who would take their place when they eventually retire, not about anyone who could beat them at this time.

It’s not like we’re talking about a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity here.

The other bit of contextual information that I want you to have is what the commentator said. I can’t remember exactly, so I’m going to paraphrase. “The next time that you’re sick on the couch, remember Evan Bates” (one of the athletes in question). By saying this, the commentator implied that if you’re sick and stay on the couch to rest, you’re less of a person than this man is. If you listen to your body and acknowledge your limits, you’re never going to achieve the kind of success that these athletes did on Saturday. 

That actually may be so. But at what cost?

Have you or someone that you know ever had a nervous breakdown or a health issue that was caused by stress, doing more, and trying harder? If you’ve never encountered this personally, you can find plenty of examples in pop culture or on social media. Do you remember Britney Spears in 2007? (Gen Z: the Britney saga has been going on for a LONG time.) Poor girl, everyone made fun of her for shaving her head and screaming in the street, but knowing what we know now, I honestly think her reaction makes a lot of sense. #FreeBritney, indeed. God bless her.

You live in the same world that I do, so I’m sure you’ve experienced this on a micro-level in your life, even if you’ve never shaved your head (although, if you have, I respect you). You bit off more than you could chew. You went to work when you had a stomach virus and your partner had to come collect you. You beat yourself up for being bed-ridden for days with a depression that just wouldn’t lift. Essentially, you went too hard and reaped the consequences: your body said, “enough!” and shut down for you.

You know this is true. Our culture glorifies denying the good, God-given instinct that we have for rest. Even in our churches, poor boundaries and lack of self-care are being rebranded as godly martyrdom (particularly for women). Even during the pandemic, the only reason that we were supposed to stay home was for the safety of others, not because we could all use a little break and this was a good opportunity to take one. Staying “safe”, doing all of the right things, and watching the doom cycle on the news created more stress than when our schedules were full.

World class athletes who are deified for ignoring bodily things that they can’t control (i.e. sickness) capture perfectly the problem that our culture has with Sabbath. Sure, take a day off, but not if it hurts your bottom line. Rest, but only when  you’ve “earned it”. Stay home and take a sick day, but only if there’s not important meetings or deadlines coming your way.

If the athletes had decided not to perform on Saturday, they certainly would have sacrificed something. They would not have won the US championship and they would not have placed high enough to continue to the world championship. I will not argue against it being a major blow and inconvenient to their careers. But I’m wondering what they lost by choosing to perform? I’m not talking about their health, dignity, or anything like that. I’m talking about the little bit of their soul that they suppressed, probably not for the first time, so that they could “do what had to be done”. This was not life or death or once-in-a-lifetime. This was not even as serious the choices that you and I have to make sometimes. They made an exception to doing what was best for themselves because the timing of needing to rest was inconvenient.

How often do we make the same choice? Is taking care of ourselves inconvenient? What does that say about our attitude towards this body that God made? What does that say about who we think is in control? What does that say about who we’d like to call the shots in our lives?

When we make exceptions to engaging in the rest that God gives us, and deep down that we know we need, we reveal the idols of our hearts. When we refuse to listen to our bodies and take some down time, we reveal what we worship: human praise and adoration, control over our circumstances, and performance or production, to name a few. God has to command us to rest and take a Sabbath because he knows how prone we are to wander. He knows how deceitful the enemy of our souls is.

Who says that being the best in the world at whatever you do should be the goal of your life? By what metric are you measuring success? I don’t have to tell you that there are countless stories (look them up: Tom Brady, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods) of athletes at the absolute top of their game who were dissatisfied with all that they’d accomplished. They were the best in the world and they found it a lonely and empty place. 

So, why do we keep chasing after it? Why do we keep letting the shifting norms of culture tell us what the foundation of our life should be? Do you really want to go to work when you’ve got the flu?

Jesus says, in Matthew 7, that the only sure thing to build your life on is his words. Anything else is like shifting sand. The difficulties of life (storms, in his words)- pain, death, financial hardship, insecurity of any kind, rejection, etc.- will come for you and if your life is built on cultural norms (shifting sand), then the house of your life will fall. 

The way I see it, you’ve got a choice. You can keep doing more, trying harder, ignoring what you know is best for you (and those around you, by the way) until your body shuts down for you or you actually achieve whatever it is you’re going after, only to discover that it doesn’t deliver what you thought it would. And then what are you going to do?

Or. You can try another way. You can seek the input of the one who made your body and your soul and ask him how he defines success. You can start to lean into your natural inclinations and desires and find joy in your life, no matter what your circumstances are. You can build your life on the rock (Jesus’ words).

Do whatever you want. My advice? Stay on the couch. You don’t have to be like Evan Bates.