我喜欢静静地疯狂。静静地实现梦想
I'm not quite sure what is it about this article that touched me on such a deep level. Mostly it's the tenacity of spirit that Souza possessed, that has always been incalculcated for gymnasts...
Maybe because I have always sort of identified with this busy, active lifestyle.. Not that I'm as gungho or as determined and strong as Souza is. But, such resilience and inner strength has always been one of my lifelong goals. One which time and again, I approach and then drift away from, as my experiences in life richen.
“She was always moving - running here, running there, always active, very restless,” her mother, Odete, said. “She stopped only to sleep.”
"Many young girls come to gymnastics with innate ability but lack the things that gymnasts need perhaps most of all: mental toughness and stamina; the maturity to take instruction, to concentrate, to sacrifice, to power through the boring repetition, to fall down and spring back up.
Her resilience comes from a lot of things: her religion, her discipline, her policy of setting a goal for herself, reaching it and
aiming for the next one."
What happened to Souza was extremely unfortunate (and that word itself doesn't do justice). It begs the question Souza didn't verbalise but I probably wondered my whole life - why do bad things happen to good people (or people who don't deserve it)? It's a "belief in a just world" fallacy. Of course good and bad things happen to everyone. And the label good and bad in itself is but our perception. When you shift your perspective and focus on the good, you come to realise that any event can inherently be ambiguous to some point... I guess life sometimes throws us our lessons before teaching us the concepts. And then, much later (perhaps years, sometimes), it tries to explain what it was teaching us when we felt we were suffering.
But whatever it is, may we all grow such mental toughness and positivity, off the gym floors and throughout life. It's precisely this spirit that makes me proudly identify myself as a gymnast. And it's true. Life's better when you're flexible (physically AND mentally).
So glad that I've accomplished my goal of handstand in air (albeit for 10-30 seconds only). Work in progress.