“Never give up,” how many times have you heard those words? But what does it mean when you try to succeed and fail, not once, but often?
Homer Simpson declared, “If at first you don’t succeed, give up before you fail again.” Insanity, Albert Einstein observed is, “…doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
Success, however, is in many ways doing just that–the same thing over and over until you don’t fail. Thomas Edison refused to recognize failure when he said, “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, said, “Never give up. Today is hard, tomorrow will be worse, but the day after tomorrow will be sunshine.”
In this year of the Tokyo Olympics, the dream born out of years of training whereby success depends on mere minutes in competition as to whether individuals triumph or fail, is never more evident.
US gymnast Simone Biles is one such individual where the concept of not giving up is embodied. Biles suffers from ADHD and was giving an exemption by the Olympic committee to use the drug Ritalin. In 2018 she was sexually assaulted by a team doctor. But those setbacks were part of a long list of discouraging incidents.
The champion gymnast’s mother, Shannon, battled alcohol addiction and was incapable of looking after her children. In an interview for the Guardian, she recalled the time living with her mother, “Growing up, me and my siblings were so focused on food because we didn’t have a lot of food,” she said. “I remember there was this cat around the house and I would be so hungry. They would feed this cat and I would be like, ‘Where the heck is my food?’ And so I think that’s [why] I don’t like cats … because this freaking street cat, she always fed it. But she never fed us.”
Simone and her three siblings were taken away from their mother. After learning the children were put in foster care, Simone’s grandfather Ron Biles adopted her and her sister. The other two siblings were adopted by their aunt.
If ever someone had excuses for not applying themselves because fate dealt them a cruel hand, it is this tiny US gymnast. And if the motto ‘never give up’ needed a meme, Simon Biles fits the bill.
ajhenryblog 