We were reading something about the plight of Debi Thomas who was an Olympic Bronze medalist and World Champion figure skater in the 80’s. She went to Stanford and was a doctor and a surgeon and is now living in a trailer park in Virgina and is flat broke. It is quite a difficult situation when your athletic career is over, and many people don’t do too well after their careers are over. We were also watching an interview with Lou Duosion a French singer who said “What would I do if it was taken away tomorrow”. Well that is how it is for every athlete and the transition into the civilian world can be painful and often times have disastrous results.

I remember when my tennis career was was over and people would ask me “what do you do?” My response was “I used to play pro tennis “, they would then say well what do you do now”, and my response was “I used to play pro tennis”. I had no real response to that question because my whole self worth and direction in life was pointed towards my career. When it was gone, I was nothing. I remember walking into parties on the “A list” and now I’m going to college parties and these idiots didn’t give a shit about my past, only what my position was on a ridiculous group college project. It was very humbling and took many years to recover from being sorta at the top of the world, and then starting back at the bottom again, with people that didn’t have half of the life experiences as you, and were looking down on you instead of up.

Thomas described her fall from grace as always being goal oriented and trying to be the best. She was taught that if you give your all and strive for excellence everything will work out. This is what athletes are taught. She found however that no matter how hard she worked at being the best surgeon, it never was quite as simple as it was in athletics. So you fix someone’s broken hand, who gives shit? Athlete’s are very selfish, narcissistic people and have a hard time grasping the concept of giving something back to society. In Thomas’ case she never got the rush from being a doctor that she did from athletics, because there really was no way to strive for perfection. Especially in her chosen sport in which if you make one slight error and you will lose. She never felt fulfilled as a doctor, so she set up a private practice cuz business has a way of making you feel somewhat independent, and you can keep track of the wins and losses kinda like she was used to in athletics. Unfortunately for her she was a bad business person, got in too much debt, lost her doctor’s license, fell in love with the wrong guy a few times, and before you know it you are broke, with few kids crawling on the floor of trailer home in rural Virgina.

As you can see it’s not too hard to see that although sports does teach you many of life’s lessons, if you are too sheltered in your sport it doesn’t prepare you for what is next. Happiness comes from within (intrinsic happiness), and if your happiness came from the outside (fame, money, girls, partying) whatever, you will never find peace and be able to move onto the next stage of life. In Thomas’s case she still hasn’t found that peace, and is now trying to sell some sort of health drinks that she says will change the world. This gives her the rush of doing something special that she craves. I however after years and years of hard work have realized that what Duosion said next in the interview was correct. She said “I now realize that if it was all taken away tomorrow and I still had 5 people to hear me sing in my kitchen that would be good enough and no one can take that away from me”.

In other words the only way athletes can move on with their lives is to find inner peace and satisfaction in the small things in life and isn’t this what life is really about?

In closing, I want to tell a story that I often tell about when I finally got it. I was reading an article in Life magazine many years ago in which they asked the question, “What is the meaning of life”. They interviewed a good random sample, Presidents, bums in the street, cab drivers, singers, artists, etc. The one I like best was a writer, who started out by talking about all this metaphysical shit about God and really deep stuff, and then he said “Or maybe it’s just a beer and a good cheeseburger”. In other words just enjoy the small things in life and you will be very content. Wasn’t there a line from Hamlet that said “Above all else to thy own self be true”. I think Thomas actually gets this now, cuz she realizes that all the fame and fortune meant nothing and hopefully if she hasn’t found it already, she will in near future find whatever it is she is looking for.