If there is one set of people who have always managed to fascinate me, it’s spotters in the gymnastic world. If you know anything about the sport, it’s the fact that it’s a high-risk sport that involves athletes doing major stunts in the air. They run, and launch themselves into the air, do all their stunts, and then land back on the ground.
Now, it could be easy, if not that humans were not always susceptible to error. Many times, the athletes made mistakes and could fumble their landing. It could be landing the wrong way on the mat or the floor, or even coming into contact with the pole in the wrong way could be fatal. Especially when you know that for whatever game you’re involved in, you must be healthy in all ways that you can possibly be.
So, that’s where the spotters come in. Their job is to watch the athletes and save them when they make a bad jump that could be fatal. I watched a video online showing where some spotters made some pretty impressive saves. From saving some people from landing on their heads to saving them from landing on their feet in a way that could shatter their ankles.
The job varied depending on the kind of accident. For some, it was as simple as being alert and ready enough to throw the mat to the place the athlete would land, protecting them from the hard and merciless ground. For others, it could be something as basic as simply catching the athlete out of the air and saving them from a drastic fall.
In the end, it seems like the spotters have to be doing the most work because they have to be very intuitive. They watch the athlete and watch them make the jump, then they use the momentum and predict where he/she will land and they can also use it to know if they’ll have a bad fall. This will help them decide just where to position themselves for the save.
I guess this frees the athletes a lot because knowing that they have spotters that they can count on allows them to be free and creative when they're doing their stunts. They don’t have to be worried about falling because they know they have someone who won’t let that happen. Because we all know that the one enemy of progress is the fear of failure. If we keep being terrified of failing, then we’re never going to work towards succeeding. Knowing that even if you fall, you’ll be cushioned will give you the audacity to take on more daring tasks.
Thankfully, this is not an analogy that works only in the world of gymnastics. It also made me think of parents and their devotion to their kids. Parents are like spotters, their job is to watch you and try and predict where you’ll fall. They don’t stop you from being creative, they don’t stop you from taking risks. However, they allow you to make mistakes so that you can fall and then learn from them. They have their sharp eyes trained on you so that whichever way you fall, they can easily toss in the mat or catch you out of the air.
So, do you have spotters? Are you someone’s spotters? It doesn’t have to be just parents. Friends and even extended family members can be spotters. You just have to be able to trust that they’ll be there for you when you’re falling. You can count on them being there to break your fall, in one way or the other. That is the job of the spotters in our lives. And that’s what makes it so beautiful.
