Nathan Chen! (And His Fascinating Comeback)

February 18, 2018

I’m sure you’ve already heard about him by now. But what a story in attitude and comebacks and resilience.

I don’t fully understand figure skating and the scoring and everything. But from my understanding, Nathan Chen was a super favorite in the Olympics, thought to have a huge shot at the gold. And then his short program was kind of a mess where he fell a bunch. And, basically, he was out of the running. He was 17th place and unless something insane (like, really just soon out of left field) happened, he was out of medal contention.

It would’ve been easy to kind of sulk and think “this only happens once every 4 years! What the heck happened in my short program?! I had my shot and this happened?!” And to worry about what happened vs what was “supposed” to happen (and on an on that type thinking).

But instead, he went out and tried to skate the long program of his life. He even tried an extra quad jump! (And I think he’s now the first person in Olympic history to attempt 6 quad jumps in a program, and to successfully, cleanly land 5?)

One of the quotes I saw from him was “I already fell so many times, I might as well go out and throw everything down and see what happens.”

And I just find it really inspiring, and something that also makes me ponder what the point of things are.

He knew (or basically, for all intents and purposes knew) that he wasn’t going to get the gold. And instead of being apathetic that he was no longer really competing for a medal, or instead of being afraid of falling again (or being embarrassed), he skated his freaking heart out!

And I just think that might be an applicable lesson in life sometimes.

He didn’t get a medal, even with his great record-breaking long program. (Just like he didn’t think he would.) But he moved and excited people with an incredible performance and he had a really interesting personal story.

So, on a personal level – (not to make an Olympian’s story about me, but it is my blog, so maybe) – I mentioned that recently I’ve been all over the place with wondering about so many things and being down on re-starting running and all of this. “I’m not where I’m supposed to be.” That’s a thought that I sometimes think and sometimes try to get rid of. But maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe even if you’re sure you’ve lost out on what the personal gold medal is for you, you can find an even more interesting narrative and you can have the most amazing time doing it….

And maybe in four years, he will win. Life changes. (It’s one of the worst and best things about it :-))

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