We Are Closer than You Think
“You think I’m being patronizing? No, we are like 1 and 11, you and I. We are closer than the others…. Winning and losing doesn’t matter. We jump to free our souls…. We are the only ones with a chance to make history…. If we do less than our best with the whole world watching it will kill us inside.” ~ Matti Nykanen, Eddie the Eagle
I love this quote! If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend that you do. Eddie is the goof ball with basically zero athletic skill and training. Matti is the jumper that has worked and trained tirelessly. Eddie thinks that Matti believes he is superior to him. Matti understands that they are closer than Eddie thinks. It isn’t about winning or losing it is about freeing their souls. They both are jumping for that alone. It is a passion beyond any metal or status. It is a drive to do no less than your best. They may look different but their passion is the same.
When you think of it as linear…
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
One and eleven seem so far apart. It appears that they are so far apart that they must be very different.
When you think of it as a circle…
Not so far apart.
Pretty cool, huh?
Often we think that the person that is most different from ourselves is reflecting to us our opposite and it is, if we think linear. We often want to be anything but be that person. If you hated the way your dad treated you when you were a kid or if you never want to fight like your parents did, you will often go as far away from that as possible. And when you are on a line, you are far away and you then believe that you have succeeded in being completely opposite of the person or behavior that you don’t want.
But pull that line into a circle and suddenly you can see that you are closer than you thought. All your running in the opposite direction was really just you running in a circle. No wonder you don’t have the life you thought you would have if you just didn’t ___(fill in any number of things)___ like them.
The thing to realize is that it isn’t about winning or losing but about the passion. Most likely the person that you think hurt you or the behavior that ruined your life was actually just the other side of a passion that you share. A passion to do nothing less than your best. A passion to free your soul. Taking the time to understand this will allow you to embrace that which you blame and integrate it into your life. Operating from only one side will get you at most 50%. Go for it. Make history. Don’t let the past kill you inside.
