When I was just a little guy, a baby-faced twenty-year-old with a downy chin and a lingering adolescent acne problem, I couldn’t imagine ever getting a rejection for my writing. Why would I? As discussed in one of my previous posts, I thought I was hot shit.
Now, after almost seven hundred rejection letters, I can really imagine getting rejected.
I’m not unique in this, I know. It’s frustrating because I know I’m a good writer. Am I a great writer? Probably not. But I have an ear for dialogue, an eye for description, an ability to create complex and compelling characters, and more importantly than anything, an unutterably stubborn, pig-headed determination. But even I’m not great, I can take a lesson from those who are not only great, but who are transcendent: the kinds of talents that come along once in a century, if not more.
Case in point: Lionel Messi.
By any reasonable statistic, Messi is the greatest footballer of the twenty-first century. The only people who even come close to his level across history are Pele and Maradona. Maybe you can include Christine Sinclair, if you want to add women’s footballers. But even though he’s possessed of a left foot blessed by the golden gods, it wasn’t as if everything came easy for him. When he was a boy on the mean streets of Rosario, Argentina, he was head and shoulders above all the other kids in the Newell’s Old Boys academy in all ways except height. In fact, he was released from the academy because the club couldn’t afford the hormone treatments that would allow him to grow to anything approaching a normal height. Fortunately for Messi, FC Barcelona stepped in, said “We will pay for your growth hormones, tiny child,” and took him to Spain to play for their academy, La Masia, which is basically the equivalent of Soccer Harvard.
Messi advanced through the ranks and broke into the first team, and he and Barcelona started dominating. League titles, Copas del Rey, Champions Leagues… there was nothing that the Barcelona of the 2000s and the 2010s didn’t win. And yet, while Catalunya loved him, the people in Argentina thought that he was barely even Argentine. He had grown up in Spain, they claimed. He wasn’t a “man of the people”, whatever that means. Whatever their justification, the people of Argentina were cool, if not overtly hostile, to him.
Fast forward to Qatar in 2022. Messi no longer plays for Barcelona. He’s well into the last stages of his career. 2022 might be his last chance to win a World Cup. Fortunately, after winning the Copa America last year, the Argentine public has warmed to Messi. His fellow players will run through a wall for him. If Messi wants to win a World Cup with Argentina, this might be his last chance…
…and they lose the first game to Saudi Arabia.
It seems inevitable in hindsight, when really it was anything but. They got out of the group stage, fought tooth and nail through the knockout rounds, and got to the final against France. Even then, Argentina had to overcome over two hours of football (two regular halves and two extra-time periods), a Kylian Mbappé hat trick, and a pants-shittingly tense penalty shootout before claiming the world title after the greatest final in World Cup history.
I remember that final. I was in a pizzeria in Madrid when I watched it. Most of the people working there were Argentine. You’d think the roof would’ve come off that place when the final penalty went in.
I’m not the Messi of writing. I’m not even close. But if someone who has a legitimate shout to be the greatest of all time in his particular field still had to go through the wringer to achieve his destiny, maybe none of us should feel bad for going through adversity to achieve ours.
Even if it kind of sucks.