To our athletes we attribute an inhuman standard of excellence. After all, they embody our dreams, hopes and desires. Athlete or not, everyone desires greatness on an unparalleled scale, everyone wants to come through in the clutch. This is why at universities across the United States - not to mention, here at Hopkins - people study for hours on end. This is why people run the extra lap or put in a few more hours on a case. Our desire for excellence is common; unfortunately, so too is failure. Because of these realities, we rest our hopes on athletes - at least for a couple hours at a time.
No one has received as much pressure as Michael Phelps. We not only expected him to set one world record; we demanded he break multiple. We wanted America's golden boy to be just that: golden. And so he was. He lit the pool in Beijing on fire. As a collective nation we watched in awe, stroke by stroke, our hopes for unrivaled excellence coming closer one millisecond at a time. Finally, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. Michael Phelps had done the impossible: He won eight gold medals.
When the pressure was on, Michael Phelps delivered. Baltimore's own met our expectations with the elegant grace of a champion. More impressive still is the fact that he is only 23 years old. Yeah, I said it. Twenty-three: that's just out of college, that's medical school applications age, that's the age when we are trying to figure this whole career thing out. Here is the difference - at 23 Michael Phelps has put hours upon hours in the pool. While we went out to a party on Friday nights, he was resting up for laps the next morning. Amidst all that Michael Phelps has accomplished, he missed out on a really important part of life: having a good time.
No one would have complained if Michael Phelps partied a bit, particularly in light of the fact that, he, more than anyone, deserves a break. But he didn't just party, he smoked marijuana. Admittedly, to the liberal folks around Charles Village and the East Coast this isn't such a big deal. But for people across the country, and even some outside of it, what Michael Phelps did was preposterous. People were shocked because a "role model" did something as bad as marijuana. "It might be okay if other people did it," critics in newspapers and talk shows said, "but not Michael Phelps."
At this point, I will even grant that marijuana is something awful - a point conceded with a lot of reluctance. Why can't people make mistakes? Since when was it acceptable to up and leave when the "infallible" err? It is clear that to abandon Michael Phelps for smoking marijuana is an act of sheer indecency. Twenty-three year olds make mistakes in their lives because they are still young. We forgive people for smoking early on because we realized that they were young, and young people err. It was acceptable for the President of the United States of America to have smoked pot when he was younger because we are a society that recognizes that sometimes people aren't perfect. By this logic, Michael Phelps shouldn't be abandoned or even attacked. Instead, we should understand that Phelps was acting like a 20-something year old acts.
Even still, the critics will say that Michael Phelps ought not be looked at like a young man, instead he should be looked at like the Olympic gold medalist that he is. To presume that he should act like the idol people make of him, forgets that before he is an idol he is a human being. He is a living person that happens to have achieved greatness. To deny him the ability to have fun by virtue of his success seems ridiculous. If having fun means making some bad decisions, that is okay - insofar as the decisions aren't reckless or chronic. Phelps was neither reckless nor was his behavior chronic. As it turns out, it is okay in this instance to label Michael Phelps a human and then an idol.
To America - leave Michael Phelps alone. To hold him to a standard of excellence is fine. Even though he seems to achieve success on the level only parallel to our dreams, we should still collectively accept that, like us, sometimes he misses the mark. Do not leave a country's hero by the wayside just because he did something that all of us have done as well: mess up. Instead, envy his commitment and success and continue to accept him as a motivation for excellence. Take the marijuana incident not as reason to reject him, but instead, use it to realize that even idols are people too.
