A tense 30 seconds, a torrent of happy screams from the audience, and Michael Phelps slowly rises from the water. He’s just won his 23^rd gold medal, the last of his career, and one that further solidifies his reputation as the most decorated Olympian in history.

Not bad for a man who wanted to kill himself two years ago.

From one perspective, the fact Phelps would consider

suicide makes no sense -- he’s had success like no other Olympian has ever had, he’s famous the world over, and he even started his own charity foundation. But ultimately, it seems those things didn’t fulfill him. In fact, Phelps told ESPN writer Wayne Drehs that by the time he went to the London Olympics, he hated swimming. It had been Phelps’ escape from issues he didn’t want to face, but the medals and everything associated left him empty, and by 2014 he “had no self-worth” and thought the world would be better off without him.
The story of how Phelps healed and got his life back together is too compelling for me to try rehashing it -- I recommend reading Drehs’ original article -- suffice to say that Phelps finished at Rio a very different man than he did at London. He finished as a man who had much more than success to live for.

Like Phelps, I had to learn the hard way recently that success doesn’t bring fulfillment -- I wrote an opinion article for a college newspaper, then got a spot on a student radio show to talk about the article, and only then discovered a certain mistake I had made. Right then, all the happiness I was getting from my success fizzled out, and I discovered I needed something much stronger to sustain me. Sure, success can bring joy -- there’s always something great about a job well done -- but it doesn’t sustain you when you fail.

This all sounds terribly un-American, I know. We’re famous for spending so much time focusing on our ambitions, on building our careers and fighting our way to bigger paychecks. So often we forget that success doesn’t mean much when we go home every night. It’s not so strong and immovable that it keeps us going in our darkest times.

To get true fulfillment, even Olympians need something bigger.

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