As a five foot one inch tall female, and probably due to some other genetic factors, I am not blessed with an abundance of physical ability. I try to work with what I have, but I start comparing myself to others and get frustrated. Maybe I’m just making excuses. There are athletes of all sizes; in fact, gymnasts as a rule are tiny, yet they manage some incredible feats of strength. Hard work does make up for a lot, and environment does matter. Still, I am starting out at quite the disadvantage. I don’t get the larger muscles and greater moments of force that come with sheer size, and I don’t get the testosterone boost men enjoy. I am weak, and it has bothered me, but the point is to improve myself where I can and accept what I can’t change.
My frustration is old, even if I didn’t recognize it until around when I entered high school or so. As a kid, I played some sort of recreational league sport at our local club most years: typically soccer in the seasons when running outside is tolerable, basketball in the seasons when it isn’t. My teams basically always lost. It doesn’t’ help that some sort of conspiracy of parents stacked, and to this day still stacks, teams so some have all the good players- even at the recreational level! Still, I didn’t exactly carry my teams. Years later in high school, I ran on the cross country team as an underclassman. You know how every team has a pack of runners tearing up the trail, and that one guy left behind plodding and panting? I was that guy. And the farther I get along, the more I realize just how many people never exercise yet are stronger than me just because they’re bigger and, typically, male.
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Sports aren’t a vital part of success in life, so why does this bother me? Partially, I just don’t like the notion of being inferior to others in any major way. It’s kind of a selfish impulse- someone has to make up the lower percentiles- but that impulse does exist. Still, I do have a use for strength. For Engineers Without Borders, I want to be better at digging holes, carrying two by fours, and otherwise helping out both at our local projects and internationally. And I figure being able to move things wouldn’t hurt my general career as a mechanical engineer either.
Since I do have some use for physical ability, my insecurities possess the kernel of truth they need to blossom. I sometimes just don’t feel very useful because I’m relatively weak. Sure, I have plenty of other useful abilities, such as intelligence and artistic ability. But one can be intelligent and artistic while being an athlete. At times, it feels like all things equal, I’m just not as useful a human being, and I really want to contribute to the world around me.
A sensible response to these insecurities is the stoic outlook: to accept what I can’t change about myself and change what I can. I can love or hate my body, but it’s mine, and I’m going to have it for a long time. I can work on what physical ability I am capable of gaining; it’s healthy if nothing else, and I really do enjoy working out. But then I must accept what I can’t gain. Things become easier to handle if you let go of the unchangeable.
But my experiences with athletics do not just show negative things about me. What is strange is that I kept trying sports and cross country despite never winning. I never even expected to win. More valuable than physical ability is a sort of dogged persistence that I sometimes manage to channel. I will settle for that for now.
