I Just Read about a Man…

“Mom? It’s me, Joel. Yes, everything’s fine. The kids are great. They’re looking forward to seeing you when you come up next month. What’s that? Yes, my practice is fine. Thanks for asking. Removed three gall bladders on Wednesday. What? No, arthroscopic. It’s called arthroscopic surgery. Yes, I think all the patients were covered by insurance. Silvie? No, I haven’t spoken to my sister this week. I was away. Where? Sailing. You know we do the Mackinaw Island race ever year.

“This year was really something, Mom. That’s what I wanted to tell you about. The weather on Lake Michigan was bad. Worst this century, they say. There was this squall that came out of nowhere, 40 mile an hour winds, four foot seas. The race organizers were talking about calling off the race, but at the last minute they said we could go. What’s that? No, it’s not dangerous—we have all kinds of electronics—but it was scary. Two of my grad students were below decks throwing up. The lake was that rough. I was at the tiller for almost the whole race, close to 40 hours. About a third of the boats turned back. We heard that one of the boats had to be towed back to the marina. That’s how bad the conditions were.

“Anyway what I wanted to tell you, you know how I’ve been doing this race every year, every year since I got out of med school? Well this year, after 23 years of doing this race? This year we won, Mom. How about that? Four foot seas, 40 mile an hour winds and we won.

“What’s that? What did you say? You say you just read in the paper about a man who crossed the Atlantic in an 18-foot boat?”

***

The above story is true. I can’t tell you how I know that it’s true; you’ll just have to take my word for it. The next story may be apocryphal or it may be true. Unlike Joel in the anecdote above, Bernard Lown, the subject of the following vignette, is not a relative of mine. (Oh, darn, there I’ve gone and disclosed how I know the sailing story is true.)

In 1985, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to a group called the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. The cofounder of the group, Bernard Lown, a world-renowned cardiologist, accepted the award on behalf of I.P.P.N.W. Watching her son ascend the dais in Switzerland, Dr. Lown’s mother turned to her companion and, sighing deeply, said, “I had always hoped he’d win in for medicine.”

Did the doctors in these stories achieve so much because their mothers had expectations that were so high? Or were these doctors dissatisfied that they were never able to achieve the approval they may have sought? If you’re never good enough, if your best doesn’t cut it, if there’s always a higher mountain, then what’s the point?

***

Haile Gebrselassie ran the Berlin Marathon in two hours, three minutes and 59 seconds. This is the fastest time ever recorded. Of the seven billion people on the planet Earth, no one has ever run that distance that fast. Of all the people who have ever lived, Gebrselassie is the fastest at 26.2 miles. (He also has back to back Olympic gold medals in the 10,000 meters and over two dozen world records in distance events.) In Berlin in 2008, he broke his own record in the marathon by 27 seconds.

I want to try to put this achievement in context. There are around 105 quarter miles in the marathon. It may seem a silly way to look at it, but 105 times a quarter mile equals about 26.2 miles. A quarter mile is the distance once around the standard track at your high school. Unless you are a trained athlete, unless you are much younger than I, there is no possibility of your running one lap—much less 105 laps—at the speed at which Gebrselassie did. You or I couldn’t run one lap in 71 seconds. Gebrselassie ran the first quarter mile in 71 seconds. Then he ran 104 more quarter miles in 71 seconds. You or I could have taken a taxi for the first 26 miles of the race, jumped out of the cab fresh as the proverbial daisy–and still lost. By a lot.

So here’s Gebrselassie on the podium receiving his award being interviewed by journalists. Do the journalists ask him how it feels to have slaughtered the world record for the marathon distance? Do they ask him how his family back in Ethiopia feels about his stunning achievement? Do they ask him how he himself feels about another world record, his 27th? No, no, and no. The first question that journalists ask—journalists who couldn’t run all the way across the parking lot to get to their cars without getting winded—is whether or not Gebrselassie thinks a sub two hour marathon is possible.

“I just read about a man who crossed the Atlantic in an 18-foot boat.”

“I’d always hoped he’d win it for medicine.”

“Do you think a sub two-hour marathon is possible?”

If you have a similar story from your own life, I’d like to hear it. With your permission, I’ll include some of your examples in the next newsletter. In the meantime, I’m going to try to focus on when “good” is good enough. Especially in college admissions, I’m going to be thoroughly satisfied and grateful when my students are admitted to good enough schools–whether or not Joel’s mother, Bernard Lown’s mother, or a bunch of random journalists have anything helpful to say about those schools.