Steve the Owl's Blog

A gold medal is a wonderful thing, but if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.- Irving Blitzer, played by John Candy in Cool Runnings (1993)

Hi, everyone. This weekend, I was checking the listings on TV, and I saw that one of the local channels was rerunning Cool Runnings, the 1993 movie based somewhat loosely on the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team, the Caribbean country’s first entry in the Winter Olympics, this one in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. While it is true that some of the events are fictionalized (such as the tension between the Jamaicans and the other countries in the competition, having Olympic-caliber sprinters rather than members of the army track team, and the role of the coach as a single individual rather than a team), there is a lot that this movie can teach about determination and what it means to truly compete with honor.

Training for Winter without Snow?

One thing that the movie did get right is the fact that before they began to prepare for the Olympic bobsled, none of the members of the team had ever seen snow before, and they were getting ready to ride at 70 or 80 mph down a hill in a sport where, “Bones don’t break, they shatter.” (I’ve heard of luge participants who say that the real question of the sport isn’t if your bones will be broken, but how many will be broken.) Needless to say, it is very difficult to find people who are willing to go through this when they were in a warm climate. The movie solves this problem for the purposes of the story by having one of the future bobsledders trip and fall during the finals of the 100-meter Olympic trials and taking out two other runners, including the team captain and driver, the son of an Olympic gold medalist. In the movie, the lead character, Derice Bannick, refuses to give up on his Olympic dream, and knowing that four years is an eternity for a sprinter, he decides to focus his efforts on the Winter Olympics instead, and he seeks out his father’s friend, Irv Blitzer, who was disqualified from the 1972 Olympics and wants to get away from the sport.

In the movie, the four finally come together, battling the elements, each other (one of the bobsledders has not yet forgiven the one who tripped him), and the doubters, to finally qualify for the Olympics. Along the way, there are three very important lessons learned. One of the bobsledders, named Yul Brenner (remember, this is a fictionalized account; the character probably got his name from the shaved head of the actor as a reference and tribute to the actor) decries the attitude of people who seem content for a life of poverty where they are “going nowhere and you’re thrilled to death about it.” He then takes out a picture and says that this is where he wants to live, revealing a picture of Buckingham Palace. Here is the scene, which is one that moves me:

Another comes in the form of the actual races. At first, Derice sees the Swiss team, ranked #1 in the world, and decides to emulate them. However, this does not work for the team, and they struggle in the first run down the hill in the competition. For the next one, they decide to be livelier and find their own style. The result is that they become contenders in the race.

The most important lesson, and the one at the heart of the movie, is about what it truly means to be a great person. Even though the character is fictitious, in the movie, John Candy (in one of his final roles before dying of a heart attack at the age of 43) plays a down-and-out two-time gold medalist who decides to add excessive weight to his sled in an effort to get an edge over the competition. He was discovered and had to give up his gold medals. His young protege dreams of Olympic glory, but Blitzer had the hard-earned life lesson at the bottom of the quote at the top of this entry. The instant that you only start to think about winning, you lose all perspective in life. I have seen this with people in network marketing who get so obsessed with getting that close or getting that sale that all of their friends stop coming around for fear that they will be pitched. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t want success, but I am saying that if you end up alienating everyone along the way to trying to earn a fortune, you’ll probably end up with neither friends nor money.

To me, that is the heart of the movie. It is about the desire not only to be the best, but to be the best person as well, and the pride that comes with earning a place at the top of your field, no matter how you finish when you get there.

In what ways do you seek to become a better person, even when the rest of the world thinks you are crazy?

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“Honor is doing the right thing when you think that no one is watching.” unknown author

If you have ever seen the movie Milk, you will probably remember that Harvey Milk’s point of entry into elected office was making a key issue of dog waste removal in his 1977 campaign for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Unfortunately, those of us who live in big cities have to deal with the problem of irresponsible dog owners on a regular basis. (In the last 24 hours, I’ve seen two people in the act of leaving dog waste behind on the streets, and with the snow melting, a lot more that was hidden from view is now on the streets.)

The Broken Window Theory

I am aware that dog waste is not the most pleasant subject to talk about, but it reminds me of the Broken Windows Theory, made famous in the mid-1990′s because of its efforts to implement it to reduce crime in New York City. Basically, the Broken Windows Theory starts with the observation that if there is a building with one window that is broken, all of the windows will be broken in a short period of time. The reason behind this is that people see a broken window that stays broken, and they assume that no one cares about the windows, so more people break glass. This theory argued that vandalism and petty crime were the cause of major crimes because people felt less pride in their neighborhoods, and more respectable citizens left.

To great surprise, this has worked out rather well in places that it has been implemented. While there has been some criticism, there have been many cities that have tried to implement the theory and found crime reduced. I can also see places where this has shown itself in the negative. For example, my wife took our dog to an animal center for his immunizations. It was in one of the worst neighborhoods in town, and its facilities were atrocious. I knew people who went there just after it opened, and they said that the facilities were nice at the time. I think that, using the dog examples, warnings of a $250 fine are worse than meaningless, because the violators know that it will probably not be prosecuted, and this leads to disrespect of the law in general.

A Better Way

Thinking about this, there are two things that can be done: step up enforcement, and work to set the example. Short of offering a reward to turn in violators, I’m not really sure what can be done at that level. However, we can do what we can to set the example. Whenever someone does wrong, make sure that you are doing right, and make sure that people see you set an example on these things.

This also plays a role when we are working on our business. After all, in the world of network marketing, we often serve as the model for our downlines. For that reason, it is important to do things the right way. It is also important to speak out against practices in the industry that are just wrong. By doing this, we can make our online community and our offline community better places to live and work, and hopefully, there will be less bad stuff that we have to dodge along the way.