Chasing Perfect

Chasing Perfect

Shauna Shahangian

Silence. You stand trembling on the mat, rubbing your hands together as chalk dust envelops you. You’ve done this countless times before, but suddenly those all too familiar twists and flips seem impossible to comprehend. Your anxiety increases. Your hands begin to perspire. You can feel your heartbeat in your throat. And that’s when you see them, the judges. Their eyes pierce into you like daggers, itching to rip into your flesh and scrutinize your execution. You avert your gaze to the only thing that matters, the beam. For the next two minutes, all your focus and energy rests on this single apparatus. At only four inches wide it still manages to hold your hopes, your dreams, and the key to your ultimate goal: perfection.

Dramatic? I think not. To an outsider, this situation may seem like an overstatement by a melodramatic teen, but in all honesty, circumstances like these are the reality for competitive gymnasts. Of course logically we know there is no such thing as perfection for humans, but from the beginning of our training, we have had it drilled into us that we are better than that, that we are superhuman. After all, we spend hours on end trying to beat the laws of science. If we can crack gravity, why should perfection be held as this elusive and intangible idea. We can achieve it. Why? Because that is a gymnast’s job. Do the impossible, and make it appear effortless.

But that does not come easily. It takes hours of grueling practices, falling on your head, ripping pieces of skin the size of coins off your hands, splitting the beam, and having your toes hit the bar before the floor to reach effortless. There is no “I can’t” in gymnastics. Its “do it or get out of my gym.” Fear is weakness, and injuries are simply bricks in the path to flawless. A gymnast never wakes up feeling like a million bucks. Something is always pulled, twisted, or sprained. But we just wrap it up and ignore the pain because comfort gets you nowhere, laziness hinders ability, and mistakes are forbidden. Gymnastics is a world where excuses are intolerable, and you are defined by the numbers on a scoreboard. Some call it madness, some call it obsession, but to me it is one thing: perfection.