With all the controversy around COVID and mental health, and a downer of an opening ceremony to boot, it’s been kinda tough to get excited about this year’s Olympic Games. But here at Big Dave’s house, all of that disappeared into background noise when we learned that my cousin Stephen’s daughter, Kristine O’Brien, had made the US Rowing team, and would be stroke seat in the Women’s Eight.
We became massive fans. We bought t-shirts, little flags, a Team USA banner, and even un-cut the cable so that we could watch the races live. It was well worth it: the girls rowed beautifully in both the heat and the finals, and we had a blast jumping up and down, shouting at the television. I’ve spent the whole week bragging to anyone who will listen.
Of course, when I tell folks, the first question I get is, “how did they do?” The correct answer is “amazing.” But that’s not what people want to know. They want to know whether the girls earned a medal. And unfortunately, the heavily-favored boat wound up one-and-a-half seconds away from the medal stand. The fact that the US women didn’t grab an unprecedented fourth consecutive Olympic gold has been written about in the press, and in fact, this was the first time in Olympic history that US failed to bring home “hardware” in any of its races - men’s or women’s. But I have to ask: despite our obsession with them, are medals really the point?
I’ve been rowing off and on for my entire adult life. It’s a sport that has given me so much, and played a large part in forming my character. My time in the boat has taught me things like persistence, self-sacrifice, focus, and dedication, and has brought people into my life who are lifelong friends. And on one hand, it seems obvious that these thing are far more important than the result of any race.
On the other, I do have a small and not-terribly-impressive collection of medals from my master’s races over the years, and I do keep them by my bedside. And if I’m being honest, I do feel a little swelling of pride when I pick them up and look over them. So how to square this circle?
As I reflect on the Thursday night’s race — the results and the process — I can’t help but connect it to the book I’m reading right now, Stephen Cope’s The Great Work of Your Life.
Cope is a psychotherapist, yoga teacher and founder of the Institute for Extraordinary Living at the Kripalu Center in Massachusetts. The book is a modern take on the ancient Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita — a text that inspired such varied thinkers as Thoreau, Tolstoy, Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.
As Cope explains, the Bhagavad Gita is a meditation on how we can “make the world of action (the marketplace, the workplace, the family) an arena for spiritual development.” In it, Krishna provides readers with a guide for how to find fulfillment in our work.
One of the more challenging principles from the Gita is that we have the right to our work itself, but not to the fruits of our work. Outrageous! If I put in a long day at the office, don’t I deserve to bring home a paycheck? That’s kind of the point of the whole thing, right? But in Cope’s interpretation, the teaching is a bit more nuanced: “Give yourself entirely to your work,” he says, “but let go of the outcome. Be alike in both success and defeat.”
Cope goes on to explain that “clinging to outcome has a pernicious effect on performance.” We can’t be fully present in our work if we’re obsessing over how we’re measuring up, over whether we’re winning or losing.
Rowing may be the perfect illustration of this concept. It’s one of the only sports in which the athletes race forward while facing backward. This means that if you’re behind, you can’t actually see who you’re chasing — all of which makes it very tempting to turn around and peek at the competition. But looking around takes your mind off the task at hand — rowing well — and, in Cope’s words, “splits the mind from the present moment.”
In fact, one of the first thing that rowers are taught is to “keep your head in the boat.” In other words, rivet your eyes to the back of the head of the rower in front of you and don’t let them stray. Why? Because turning your head messes with your form, and can even throw off the balance of the boat, both of which mean a loss of boat speed. So it’s not just a metaphysical concept — the stakes are in fact very real.
Taking this idea one step further, rowers are told to “row their own race,” and not think about the other boats.
This, of course, is almost impossible. After all, if you didn’t want to win, you wouldn’t be there in the first place. And bringing home the hardware is something that every rower dreams of. But I think where Krishna gets it right is that when we focus too intensely on outcomes, we risk losing out on the other gifts that racing has to offer.
In this feature for Current TV, Kristine speaks eloquently about the connection between her rowing and her spirituality — specifically her Catholic faith.
But if the Gita is correct, this spiritual connection is also in the work itself — in the lessons it offers and the places it takes us, no matter what the outcome. In speaking about their training in a story for USA Today, rower Olivia Coffey said, “I don’t think about what other teams are doing, and I don’t think they think about what we’re doing. I can control what I can control.” For her part, Kristine said, “What I appreciate the most is the journey that I’ve taken to get here.” I think Krishna would be proud. I know I am.