Okay, I will admit it. I am a big fan of the 1980's. One of my favorite satellite radio stations is the 80's on 8 and whenever I channel surf and come across a movie from the 1980's, I almost always stop and watch it. For reasons that completely escape me, I was thinking about the 1985 hit movie, Vision Quest the other day.
The movie is classic 1980's - a high school wrestler from Spokane, Oregon meets and falls in love with an aspiring artist on her way to California. The wrestler, Louden Swain (played by the actor Matthew Modine) decides that he needs to do something truly meaningful with his life (great concept so far). So, he decides to drop two weight classes (from 190 lbs to 168 lbs) to wrestle a three-time state champion who has never lost a wrestling match in his entire high school career, Brian Shute. Everyone is against it at the beginning of the movie - his coach, his teammates, and even his own family. As you can imagine, the drastic loss in weight required by starving himself and working out literally all the time has an adverse impact on his personal health (depicted in the movie as frequent nose bleeds). In the middle of all this, his widower father takes on a boarder (played by the actress Linda Fiorentino - Carla, the aspiring artist on her way to California. Of course, the two fall in love. Louden's feelings for the girl get in the way of his dreams and he starts to lose focus. She decides to leave, breaking his heart. He gets back on track, she comes back at the end, and - you guessed it! - he beats Shute in the final climactic scene of the movie.
It's a great movie with an all-star cast. In addition to Modine (in his break-out role), Fiorentino (you may remember her more for her role in the movie, Men in Black), Michael Schoeffling (who is perhaps better remembered for his role as Jake in the movie Sixteen Candles), Daphne Zuniga, and Madonna! The movie soundtrack was pure 1980's with hits by Journey, Madonna (of course), John Waite, Sammy Hagar, Foreigner, and Red Rider ("Lunatic Fringe").
The movie's title comes from a Native American rite of passage (Louden's best friend, played by Schoeffling, claims to be part Cherokee Indian) called a vision quest. A "vision quest" is about going into the wilderness on your own to discover who you are and who your people are and how you fit into the circle of birth and growth and death and rebirth" (quote by the author, Terry Davis who wrote the novel on which the movie is based). So, Louden finds his way in life by making the impossible possible - beating a three-time state champion wrestler who has never been beat.
The lesson that I took away from the movie (even when I first saw it as a senior in high school, right at the start of swim season) is this - if you want to be the best, you have to work hard for it. Being the best at something takes 100% commitment, dedication, perseverance, and passion. And hard work - lots of it. Take Louden Swain as an example. All through the movie, he literally never stops working out. He actually goes to Shute's wrestling matches at other high schools and takes notes (in one of the movie's scenes, he is speaking into a tape recorder with the crowd cheering in the background, "Notes on the Shute-MacLean match"). Shute became his obsession.
Now take Shute as an example. In one of my favorite scenes, Louden and his friend walk into the local football stadium to find Shute carrying this gigantic log on his shoulders while he steps up on to the bleachers from the field level to the top of the stadium. Now that is what I call training! Obviously Shute didn't get to be an undefeated, three-time defending state champion without a lot of hard work, commitment, and dedication. As General Colin Powell, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State under George W. Bush once said, "A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination, and hard work."
My point is this. If you want to be the best at something, you are going to have to commit to it 100%. It's going to take hard work. It's going to take unwavering commitment and dedication. And it's going to take incredible focus. It doesn't matter whether you are an 18 year-old high school wrestler, an aspiring artist, or even a physician or nurse. The same is true even for hospitals. If you want to be the best, you have to be 100% committed to being the best.
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