The Radical Self-Compassion of Simone Biles
Biles desire to be more than her accomplishments breaks longstanding American myths about who is deserving and undeserving of our collective help.
It can be hard to believe that Simone Biles would ever feel undeserving. The most decorated gymnast in the history of the sport, the 24-year-old is an international icon of generational magnitude, a phenom who conducts herself with great dignity in the face of overwhelming pressure. But after stepping out of several events in the Tokyo Olympics, Biles reacted to the wave of support from fans with gratitude for their unconditional support:
What does it mean to be “more than my accomplishments”? Biles acknowledges the precarity felt when you fear the love and support of those around you is conditional upon your ability to perform, as well as the relief that comes with knowing that true humanity is unconditional. Most of Biles fans wanted nothing more than for her to make the decision that was best for her personal well-being, mental and physical, and knowing that must come as a grave relief to the Olympian who, after all, will one day age out of gymnastics altogether. Knowing she is wanted and supported in this world when that day comes is the kind of peace of mind we all should receive from our family, friends, and society at large.
Contrast Biles’ sense of gratitude with that of a Missouri woman and single mother of five recently profiled in a New York Times story about the impact of pandemic-era programs that have cut national poverty by a staggering 45%. After losing her job at the start of the pandemic, her family was one of millions kept afloat by stimulus checks, unemployment assistance, and food assistance made possible by The CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan:
“Without that help, I literally don’t know how I would have survived,” she said. “We would have been homeless.”
Still, Ms. Goodwin, 29, has mixed feelings about large payments with no stipulations.
“In my case, yes, it was very beneficial,” she said. But she said that other people she knew bought big TVs and her former boyfriend bought drugs. “All this free money enabled him to be a worse addict than he already was,” she said. “Why should taxpayers pay for that?”
For at least the past century, the US has largely viewed poverty through the lens of “the deserving and undeserving poor.” Rooted in 19th century English law, this notion classifies people shoved into poverty on the basis of some life events — disability and natural disasters — as more “deserving” of support than those in poverty because of factors that could supposedly be linked to their personal choices. It’s under this neoliberal tenet the grand social programs of FDR’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society were raided, defunded, and closed off in a bureaucratic state constantly requiring those seeking aid to justify their need for support.
The Missouri mother above, despite benefitting from anti-poverty programs, could be forgiven for echoing the sentiment you’ve likely been told about people asking for money on the street — they’ll just spend it on drugs. Blessed with an inside perspective of her own experience, she can see the hardships brought to her door by the pandemic were not of her choosing. But as many of us are prone to do, she sees the state of affairs of her neighbor as just desserts.
The best way to differentiate between those who “deserve” help and those who are “undeserving” of help is to find yourself in need of help. Once you do, regardless of the reason, you’re likely to find that trouble finds us all and in many forms. Those forced into crisis by a pandemic or wildfire are viewed with more pity than those living out a long-term crisis brought on by generational poverty, trauma, or criminalization despite, as individuals facing monstrous and abusive societal structures, having about equal the capacity to stop the bleed to their finances and well-being.
In the heat of the Great Depression, John Steinbeck famously said socialism never caught on in the US because “the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” The myth of meritocracy is so core to our understanding of how our society functions it is ingrained into our own self-perception alongside long-standing racist, misogynist, and ableist attitudes about labor, achievement, and public aid. A tragedy beyond our control — as tragedies usually are — challenges that, and we resolve the cognitive dissonance by attempting to place ourselves among the pitiable few, not the (fictional) loafing masses.
Simone Biles, with an unimpeachable list of reasons she deserves all the support she receives, offers a brief moment to consider how this mentality betrays all who live under it. When our humanity is treated as conditional upon our ability to bear circumstances beyond our control, it forces us into a permanent state of precarity. Our value to those around us is too often hinged on our ability to thrive in an economy and culture that depends on our exploitation, made all the worse by any number of racial, gender, or sexual identities we may carry with us that society is eager to restrain or define. The relief that Biles feels at knowing she can do right by her own needs and safety while still receiving unconditional support cannot be bought nor won by our own endurance. It must be mutually granted by us all to us all, without restriction or conditions, no matter what.
When President Joe Biden talks about his anti-poverty programs — which are genuinely historic and life-changing — he often notes those forced into poverty by the pandemic find themselves there “through no fault of their own.” The implication is those who walked into the pandemic in dire straits simply had it coming.
What would it mean to direct the compassion (and money) offered to those enduring the worse economic impacts of this calamity to those enduring any number of life-altering disasters? What would it mean to build an economy that recognizes the worth of each human regardless of their accomplishments? Not because personal responsibility doesn’t exist, but because personal responsibility can only be made possible when all of us are standing on the equal ground of our own humanity.
Biles brief act of radical self-compassion is not going to overthrow these myths, but that it should be considered radical at all proves the necessity of her example. The Missouri mother above can hardly be blamed for echoing the hegemony we all are born into any more than she can be blamed for the impact of the pandemic on her life. Each provides an opportunity, however, to reflect on how deeply ingrained this sense of shame is, one that reaches the destitute and the elite in different forms but reaches them nonetheless.
