Wisdom Comes in Asides that We often Do Not Want to Hear — an Admirable Example from Rick Salutin’s Review of Silken Laumann’s Book, Unsinkable

© 2014 Peter Free

 

12 February 2014

 

Citation — to Rick Salutin’s insightful, short essay

 

Rick Salutin, Success in sports isn't always the greatest metaphor for life, Rabble.ca (07 February 2014)

 

 

A good deal of the American cultural mindset appears to be about pretending reality doesn’t exist — When someone pulls back the myths, it is liberating

 

I stumbled across Rick Salutin’s review of former Canadian sculls rower Silken Laumann’s memoir, Unsinkable, today.  His short essay is worth reading for people who appreciate a thoughtful mind in action.

 

Silken Laumann is a motivational speaker and author, drawing on her determined recovery from a devastating leg injury to win a bronze medal in single scull rowing during the 1992 Olympics.

 

The “conventional” interpretation of her book and pinnacle experience goes like this:

 

 

Just ten weeks before the 1992 Olympic Games, Silken Laumann, the reigning world champion in single sculls rowing, suffered a brutal accident that left her right leg shattered and useless. Doctors doubted that she would ever row competitively again.

 

But twenty-seven days, five operations and countless hours of gruelling rehabilitation later, Silken was back in her racing shell, ready to pursue her dream.

 

When the starter’s pistol rang out on August 2, she made the greatest comeback in Canadian sports history, rowing to a bronze-medal finish while the world watched, captivated by her remarkable story. Silken became one of Canada’s most beloved Olympians and has continued to inspire, encouraging people to dream, live in the moment and embrace life’s unexpected, difficult, and  amazing journey.

 

© 2014 Silken Laumann, Silken & Co., SilkenLaumann.com (visited 12 February 2014) (paragraph split)

 

 

Rick Salutin, novelist and playwright, however takes a more penetrating perspective

 

He writes, using Laumann’s own shifting perspectives about herself, about what is actually true:

 

 

She’s become an in-demand motivational speaker but feels "increasingly inauthentic" and experiences "periods of fury and self-loathing."

 

Laumann is stunningly honest about the source: her narcissistic, hostile, undermining mother, who eventually left (she doesn’t say, abandoned) the family.

 

So the drive to win was a drive to prove her worth, since her mom hadn’t provided every kid’s birthright: assurance that they’re inherently worthy.

 

It’s just that love is not enough, as Holocaust survivor Bruno Bettelheim wrote. Kids also need respect and it’s odd how often the two exist separately.

 

Those early deficits are hard to overcome. I once asked the wisest, kindest man I knew if I’d ever transcend my rage toward my parents. He said simply, "I never have."

 

[L]ife involves a different kind of healing than she did after her 1992 wound. It may be more useful (and therapeutic) to say: Now it’s time to give up on healing and just get on with it as best we can. That’s clearly what Freud thought. He wrote, late in his own life, "We must submit to the superiority of the powers that defeat our efforts."

 

But how’d that go down with people who pay to hear your motivational talks, and whom you count on to recommend you for future gigs?

 

© 2014 Rick Salutin, Success in sports isn't always the greatest metaphor for life, Rabble.ca (07 February 2014)

 

 

The moral? — Sad truth, contained in a book review about someone who herself appears to be of two minds about the possibilities of “successful” healing

 

Most of what we hear around us is, at best, temporarily comforting lies.  Much of what we tell ourselves is also.

 

Clarity and clear people are rarities.  Perhaps because both require unflinching courage and undaunted vision.