Chasing Ryk's Dream

I started reading my autographed copy of Ryk Neethling's book, Chasing the Dream, and so far I am on page 22. At turns I feel a breathless excitement that I might be mentioned, since Ryk describes a childhood swimming experience that is almost a carbon copy of my own life. It is also fascinating to observe that Ryk also stuttered as a young boy, and grew up on a farm, and excelled in other sports.

While Ryk nearly drowned as a young boy, my brother suffered the same experience as a babe (as a three year old my father found him at the bottom of the pool, and my father fished him out - no tears, as though he'd been sleeping there).

Ryk's sister Elsje was the classmate of my girlfriend at the time, Samantha.
I think as his story progresses into High School at Grey, the projectories of our lives became very very different. I think I started off with a few incidental similarities. At the age of 5 I could swim 50 metres butterfly, non-stop. I think at the age of 11 I was awarded a trophy (still in junior school) for Most Promising Swimmer (Ryk earned this accolade in his first year).

I was also surprised to learn that Tanya Oosthuizen was such a pain in the arse. She was verskriklik neus in die lig when I knew her, because she had an Angelina Jolie type body. Seeing that in bathing suit each day wasn't easy, and she knew it. The girls at swim practise were bizarrely snooty - which today I ascribe to high levels of Christian indoctrination, horrid levels of shyness and a certain number of them were homosexuals (I would only discover later).

But, I digress. I feel the same thing reading Ryk's story as I did reading about Hansie Cronje. It's also not just because they also went to Grey and grew up in Bloemfontein. I've felt similar attacks of painful envy reading Alex Garland's The Beach. Why? Because I was 27 when I read The Beach, and Garland was 26 when he published it. To the extent that these three separate individuals have inspired me, they also awaken the deep seated frustration - very painful frustration - associated with not achieving one's potential.

I know in South korea I confronted some of those powerful feeling's of incompetency, and I did so bravely where I was, alone in an apartment in a polluted satellite of Seoul. I realised at the time how ordinary friends of mine were achieving great things. One of them was a Prince of Industry, living in Houghton, having jumped higher and higher up the corporate finance ladder. And I asked myself the hard question:

What can you do?
What talent do you have?

For the first time in some years I conceded that writing was something I could do, and began to invest in it (this blog is one offshoot). 2 years later I am working for a Media Company, with several feature articles published in magazines and newspapers, and one or two other achievements. I am not a trained journalist, or a trained photographer, but I seem to be a natural at both. Do I feel satisfied with these paltry achievements? Not even close. But it is better than being a second language English teacher, a yopgi weygoygin (crazy foreigner) holed up somewhere in South Korea. It's an improvement, but it's still not that far - as far as I'm concerned - from the starting line (I can still hear the starting gun echoing in my ears...)

This is in part why I cried the other day, watching Clark Kent in an episode of Smallville being told by Lana (the love of his life) that he needs to go out into the world and do his thing. I think that really resonated with me. It is not that I have not gone out into the world - I have. It is that I haven't always done or been able to do what I really wanted to do. This applies to my studies, sport and a large fraction of my working life.

By far the strongest feeling I feel on a daily basis is frustration. I know that even as a young boy, as my brother and I learned of our artistic heritage, and visited our Uncle Gabriel de Jongh, there was a strong sense that our talent would take us somewhere. My brother interpretted this literally, and his singleminded approach paid off because today he is a successful oil painter, and his art work sells for tens of thousands of Rands at auctions.
I interpretted this less literally. I entertained the idea of being a professional triathlete (so far Raynard Tissink is the first and only South African to pull that off).
I also know, as recently as this year, when I visited by brother, I realised that my current frustration was based on not giving vent to my talent. I have been doing so more and more, and some of my frustration isn't due to error or distraction on my part. In the end though, it is up to me to find a way.

The problem with me was that I was blessed with quite a lot of talent as a young boy. I was an excellent runner, an excellent swimmer, a good soccer player, an artist, a writer - and I was winning awards in all of these areas. At school I was good at maths, and science, and art and languages. Despite my stutter, I was very popular at school.

When my brother went to Saint Andrews Grahamstown, and the war between my parents began to escalate, I was really alone at home to make sense of it. I made a critical choice then, which was to quit swimming in order to try something else -tennis, or rugby.
In retrospect, I don't think I would have ever become a Springbok swimmer. I was good, but I have always been a little bit too short (1.77m) and I have fairly small hands and feet for a swimmer. While I thought of the Olympics once upon a time, my best chance was in Triathlon - that was as true then as it is today.

At the time though, swimming was an important counsellor. It kept me occupied, it kept my mind and body strong. Quitting when I did (after winning Free State Champs) as I say was a crucial decision. Unfortunately, right then, due to a confluence of events, I battled to deal with everything - adolescence, family troubles, a crisis of faith, problems with my teeth (braces), and by quitting swimming all the negative energy impacted on my far worse. One of the implications of being from an artistic family is one's sensitivity, and I guess, a certain amount of narcissim. Grey was about being macho champions, and didn't understand either of these (gentlemen or not), and I was really humiliated in high school, as I believe, was my brother. Even today I have no wish to speak to most of the classmates I knew then; many of them have Friend Requested me on Facebook, but I can't think why I would want to have anything to do with such a bunch of doos's.

In this sense, my school life at Grey was very difficult, and very different to Hansie's or Ryk's. I crept into a shell and stayed there for 5 years. My external braces really interferred with the time in a young man's life where you want to and need to step forward and demonstrate who and what you are. I did try, but against an audience of boos, it is not very gratifying.

I attempted a comeback in swimming two years later (which reveals something about how long it took to recover and grow up after those initial painful setbacks) I did so without knowing I was suffering from Tick Bite Fever. Basically this meant that the harder I trained, the weaker I got. High school was a terrible contrast to the success of a few year's earlier, although I did manage half colors in swimming at one point, and I went on a running tour with the school's top athletes.

I am not going to belabor the point, except to say that I still feel the loss of not achieving during those and the following years very acutely. I did achieve Provincial Colors a few times in Triathlon after school. While my brother wanted to be a great artist, for a while I seriously wanted to be a respected author, a writer. But in general I wanted to be a success, so writing was always sidelined, always waiting for studies or exams to be over. It was never the centre,and I was conflicted that it should be. I didn't want to observe life, or others, I wanted to live it. I wasn't interested in journalism or being a reporter (and I still am not). Photography has been a suprise twist. Although I love art, and miss it, photography has allowed me to demonstrate my artistic eye (and feel) fairly quickly and neatly.

In 2006 I realised again to what extent FRUSTRATION haunted my experience of sport. I arrived at a Free State Championship race without a timing chip, and was refused permission to compete. A few weeks later, at SA CHAMPS in Bloemfontein, David George would be given permission for exactly the same blunder. At the time, I was furious. The anger was really based on the amount of work and effort dedicated to a task, and being frustrated to actually demonstrate one's ability by other people who thought they were doing the right thing, or what looked right.

The race I missed was a crucial one - one my friend Andre said I 'probably' would have won, and it was the first race in several months where I was so well conditioned.

Unlike Ryk, I never had a singleminded dream to go to the Olympics, although I have had dreams of going to triathlon world championships, and seen my training buddies pack their bags for Cancun, but not me. Did I not train hard enough? Was I not talented enough?

Unlike Hansie, I have had a very ambivalent attitude towards money, since there was always a lot of money in our family but it didn't seem to hold the family together. Unlike Alex Garland, I didn't see writing as a career, because so many writers I respected had such troubled lives behind their writing. People like Ayn Rand wrote powerful stories that masked their dysfunctional lives. And having witnessed dysfunction in my family, I didn't want to invite it into my life by taking on a career that causes so many to be dysfunctional.

This has been my weakness - mixed and conflicting feelings. Reading Ryk's and Hansie's story, what they both have in common, that I didn't have, was the consistent support of their families. As a youngster I also had a singleminded approach, and am still capable of that kind of focus. I know my greatest supporter when I grew up was my mother, who attended almost every swim training session, and without exception, every gala. But as I became a teenager, she became a troubled woman and I had to cycle to some of those 5am swim sessions before school. And when your parents are at war with one another, children can seem little more than a distraction. Today, of course, my mother is no longer there at all.
And today, all of us seem to have different memories of the the 80's. My father seems to think it was a trouble free time, my brother blames my mother for all the unhappiness, and my sister was on her own heroin-fueled planet. So is it any surprise that I emerged somewhat mixed up?

There are other reasons, besides, for my present frustration. Some come from the past. But understanding the past is one thing, dewlling there, brooding, and blaming, is another. Solutions come in the present. I can offer a solution to my circumstances, and possibly, if you suffer the same sense of almost debilitating frustration - for yours.

You need to develop a few singleminded goals for your life. These goals are not identified for fun, or because you should. They are goals that address your present circumstances, and deliver you from your frustration.

One of the ways I feel happy is by performing, by achieving something. Simply put - doing something worthwhile, worth caring about.
In 2005 I experienced a glimpse of inner greatness when I finished the Ironman. This year I have worked hard, and achieved less than I had hoped, yet at least I have transformed myself to the point that another Ironman is not only on the cards, but possibly, I can now work on finishing the race fast.

Meaningful goals for me:

1) Ironman 2009
2) To publish a book in the next 2 years, and to finish the present 2 I am working on
3) To start a family by 2010.
4) To start a business which addresses our energy problem
5) To keep my weight below 80kg and all the lifestyle implications that go with that.

I have a few other ideas, but they are more personal.

Before I close on this unusually personal account, I want to mention the day I went to interview Ryk Neethling's baby sister Jean-Marie. At the time I had just returned from South Korea and had started teaching at Brebner High School, where my mother was head girl once upon a time. This was one of the low points of my life. The teaching was incredibly draining. I was struggling a lot financially - I think I was getting around in my girlfriend's car at the time, and this was starting to annoy her. I remember visiting the big white house on the flanks of Naval Hill, and being very charmed with this young, pretty chip off the Neethling block. But beside this positive inspiration, I felt a very strong negative energy. I felt incredibly intimidated meeting Ryk's dad, and realising who I had become vis-avis Ryk. I admitted this when I shook Ryk's dad's big hand. He asked me how things were and I admitted 'they could be better'.

I imagined how this father who had also seen me swim at many galas where Ryk had performed so well, must have viewed me in comparison to a son, younger than I, who probably could not have achieved more than he has...and here I was...could I have achieved any less?

If you are feeling angry or frustrated, you need to do something, otherwise those feelings persist. If you continue to resist those feelings, there is no one to blame but yourself, because then you will become a Blamer, rather than a Doer, and that is always a signal that you're on track to becoming a Loser, rather than who and what you are destined to be.