Shortly after Simone Biles withdrew from team competition, tennis star Novak Djokovic shared his thoughts about pressure and competition:

“Pressure is a privilege, my friend… Without pressure there is no professional sport… All that buzz and all that noise is the thing that, I can’t say I don’t see it or I don’t hear it, of course it’s there, but I’ve learned, I’ve developed the mechanism how to deal with it in such a way that it will not impose destruction to me. It will not wear me down.”

When asked about Biles’ withdrawal, Djokovic said, “If you are aiming to be at the top of the game, you better start learning how to deal with pressure and how to cope with those moments, on the court and off the court.”

A few days later, during a challenging bronze medal match, Djokovic threw his racket into the stands. He later smashed another and threw it into the photographer’s pit.

It’s interesting to note that, with the exception of one racket-hurling Serbian tennis star who doesn’t seem to do well with pressure, the world of Olympic athletes has rallied in support of Simone.

Her critics, on the other hand, are anything but Olympic athletes, having no experience whatsoever with the mental/emotional/physical demands of olympic-level competition. Far as I can tell, none of these folk have ever held a job that involves flying, unassisted, 20 feet in the air, spinning four or five times in as many directions, with no nets, no tricks; a job that often results in severe injury for people who don’t show up with 110% focus.

It’s also interesting to note, and altogether unsurprising, that there is political division here. You’ll find no negative thoughts at USA Today, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, et al. Conservative voices, on the other hand, have been colorful, calling Biles a “quitter,” “unbrave,” “selfish,” “un American,” a “sociopath,” and, according to one of my conservative Facebook friends, a bad example for our children.

Racism?

Some are claiming that these anti-Simone sentiments are racist, as the conservative world, according to many liberal folk, has a racism problem. Granted, there is some compelling research suggesting that conservative ideology and/or culture does lend itself to a level of racial resentment that’s more prevalent than what you’ll find in liberal America.

In 2015, Harvard sociologist Ryan Enos co-authored a paper that details the differences in racial resentment between liberals and conservatives. Enos doesn’t set out to prove that conservatives are more racist than everyone else, but he and his colleague do strongly suggest that instances of racial resentment are higher within this group.

Likewise, according to this analysis of the General Social Survey, folk who identify as conservative are more opposed to interracial marriage, less friendly to a black president, more likely to believe that Blacks are lazy/unintelligent, and more racially segregated than their liberal counterparts.

But let’s not pretend that liberals don’t have a racism problem. While the above articles claim that racial resentment is higher among conservatives, it’s not much higher. America, still, has a racism problem. A really big one.

To this accusation of racism in our Simone opinions, I’ll point out the ethnic divide in our posture – all of her critics are white. I’m not aware of any non-white influencers calling her a quitter, bad example, etc.

As an out-of-the-closet racist, I don’t see why we should take racism off the table.

Quitting is Always Bad

There’s one common theme in these critiques: quitting is weakness, especially if you’re a champion. Champions don’t quit. American’s don’t quit. George Washington didn’t quit. Abraham Lincoln didn’t quit. It seems that there’s some kind of immoral element to quitting. Always.

Especially if it’s justified on the grounds of mental health concerns, because us ‘Mericans don’t like to talk about mental health. We certainly don’t like to deal with it, which might explain why our mental health problems are off the charts. Some say that Coronavirus is to blame, but mental health in America is a much older problem.

And so, from our comfy chairs, with a bag of chips and a White Claw, we hurl insults at the world’s greatest gymnast because she walked off the stage. If she would’ve stayed in the game and hurt herself, she would be a hero, because us ‘Mericans love it when someone pushes themselves to the point of physical injury while we live our lives with a level of risk aversion that’s unprecedented in human history.

That’s not healthy.

Healthy people don’t spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about how others aren’t doing their job, or get mad when someone else decides to quit. Folks who are healthy focus on their own lives, working hard to be the people they think they should be.  With regards to child rearing, healthy parents know that their kids are watching them, not Simone. If my kids turn out to be quitters, it won’t be because of the 2021 Olympics.

Take a Break

I get it. We want our atheletes to go out and dance for us. When they don’t, we get upset, especially if their dance is a dangerous one. But that’s not because of them, it’s because of us. There’s something broken.

It could be racism. Maybe it’s a mental health thing.

Don’t rule out modern Western entitlement.

But if you find yourself in the anti-Simone camp, and your posture is stealing a bit too much of your peace, you’ve got the “twisties,” i.e., you’re having a hard time telling which way is up. Maybe you should quit, walk off the judgment stage, let your mind get right.

I’ll tell you, from a long history of personal experience, that it’s not an easy thing to do. There are litany of dark and disturbing reasons why the “shortcomings” of others make us so angry. For many of us judgers, it’s a way of life, a desperate distraction from our own frailties that veils itself as a coping mechanism.

You can’t just get out of bed one morning and decide to stop. It’s an addiction. A powerful one.

It’s also a sign of mental illness. It leads to anxiety and the ever-increasing sense that there’s something wrong with everybody, including ourselves, which leads to the very unhealthy belief that there’s just something wrong with everything. Maybe that’s why Jesus told us to avoid it like the plague.