Blpg post written by New Zealand Judoka Hugo Dewar, Connect with Hugo HERE

As Kiwis, we live in a nation devastated by a sickness not easily vanquished.
Coming from a community of fighters, it was easy to fall victim to the idea that – with enough machismo – any difficulty in life could be crash tackled, choked, or drop kicked into oblivion.

This is not so.

Broken dreams are as inevitable as dreaming itself.
Anybody who has dared to dream, has seen their dreams transformed, fulfilled, or unwravelled before their eyes.

It is impossible to totally vanquish failure, disappointment, anger, and bitterness from human experience, any more than it’s impossible to remove all risk from life, without living a bubble wrapped life free of joy and the fulfillment of challenges.

The risk of defeat, both physical, and non-physical, is what makes winning so pleasurable.

It is why athletes take on greater and greater challenges.
It is what motivates professional people to take on enormous workloads, in pursuit of pride, riches, and the elusive label of “successful person”.

It is forever present in our greatest relationships, which blossom out of a mutual interest and acceptance, and flourish in spite of the ever present risk of losing the other person – either by an act of God, or other separation.

But the courage, and some might even say foolishness of gathering up our eggs into a single basket, without cracking them, is the courage that breeds a unique kind of sadness – a loss of direction which comes from putting your entire self into a single thing.

I come from a community devastated by 2 recent suicides;

In the quest for excellence, it is so frighteningly easy to lose sight of the things that define you.

As a child, I wanted one gold medal. Just one.
Now my medal rack quivers with the weight of past achievements, and yet some of those around me have 2 or more times the number of medals and accolades that I do.

The better I become, the more pressure I place on my already injured shoulders, because
as I move higher up the ladder I see loftier heights beckoning.

But these heights can only be reached by exponentially greater effort, and this is the risk.

To win a national medal takes dedication and talent.
To win a continental title takes dedication and talent.

To win an A grade event like the Olympic Games takes an obsession which demands everything else in life be put on the back burner.

But the nature of sport is that there are many more winners than losers.
So what happens when we lose?

When your life is consumed with sport, or any undertaking, it fills the spaces in your life in which you reflect. Time spent eating, sleeping, and socialising all revolve around a cycle of training.

When you are mentally challenged, you are forced to push through, and many athletes are afraid to step back, for fear of being swallowed up by the dogs snapping at their heels to take their titles, and assume their own legacies.

When I fought in the Oceania World Cup in 2012, I remember the Russian team coach said “I could replace any one of these guys with any one of 10 other players”. The depth of talent in Russian judo is unlike anything here. If you fall behind, you might have your place in history, but your position is history – handed over to a hungry athlete ready to sacrifice anything and everything for a medal clad with gold.

I believe many athletes lose sight of who they were before they picked up the raquet, donned their judogi, or ran their first 100m sprint.

Their identity is stripped away, replaced by what they do, rather than what they stand for.
Because sport assumes ultimate value – their personal value becomes about sporting accompliments, and their ability to reflect upon their inner self, and defend it against negative voices and depressive episodes, is consumed by the need for training, training, and more training.

How can we protect those who inspire us, motivate us, and sacrifice their mental and physical health for our entertainment? How can we touch the spirit of brothers, sisters, and friends, and not just the ribbons which support the talismans of their past victories?

We teach footballers how to dribble and run. Judoka how to throw, hold and submit opponents. What else should we be teaching?

Firstly – Our achievements do not define who we are, they are lights which point to aspects of our characters, and often also involve an element of luck and opportunity.

Secondly – Positive self talk is crucial to attacking the negative voices which so often intrude into our lives, and tell us the things we least need to hear, often when we are exhausted, isolated, and uncertain.

Thirdly -Culture is a chosen thing, and we can transform our sporting cultures into environments which are increasingly supportive, accepting, and nourishing, through the bravery to stand up and assert positive values an transform a culture through positive modelling. I have seen this happen in the wake of these suicides, which – tragically, but poignantly,have likely themselves saved lives through encouraging real talk about mental health, and the struggles associated with being an athlete. This is particularly crucial for men, whose cultures sometimes laud the ability to be strong over the ability to be self aware, genuine and compassionate.

Fourthly -Loss is an essential part of victory . In Muay Thai, repetitive kicking of kick bags creates microfractures in the kicker’s shinbone. Over time, in the same way that micro-tears in muscle tissue create stronger muscle fibres, the shinbone becomes conditioned and the bone stronger.
Loss is the same – if properly examined it can create a resilient spirit, and can result in a stronger performance and a stronger psyche. During this process, however, there is a great deal of pain.

Muay Thai fighters often use linament balms to soothe the pain of battered shins. As athletes, we are one another’s balms. As professional people, we are part of a matrix which is only as strong as its components. What is true of sport is true in every undertaking.

Fifthly – Failure to achieve a goal is not failure as a human being. Athletes need to ask themselves – who am I without my sport? If you have nothing to aspire to, dream about, or build within yourself after a loss, or retirement, then you are not a failure, you are a book whose chapter is yet to be written, and which needs to be exposed to other material in order to decide what sort of book you really are, and what experiences, words, and characters will ultimately fill your pages.

I dream of a culture which is cultureless – taking the best elements of everything we observe around us, and reflecting it back at the people in our environments. Like any optimistic ideal, this idea is constantly attacked by the realities of what it actually feels like to be a human being. Sometimes we fail and we struggle to reconcile with positive beliefs about failure. Sometimes we are angry and lash out at those we decided we would build up.

In life, broken dreams are the consequences of daring to dream about anything at all.

The question is, when we are showered with the broken pieces of our dreams, how do we build a bridge to something better?