What Ronda Rousey's Suicidal Thoughts mean to Regular People

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 "Winning all the time 

isn't what's best for everybody. [...]

 Maybe I had to be that example of 

picking myself up off the floor 

for everyone. 

Maybe that's what I'm meant for".

Ronda Rousey: the very embodiment of the word 'motivation' for most people, arguably until her first loss to competitor Holly Holm at the UFC 193 on November 15, 2015.

I remember being extremely saddened by the fact that I could not acquire tickets to attend UFC 193, particularly considering it took place in my hometown, and that my favorite fighter, Ronda Rousey, would be headlining the main fight. I was ecstatic to think that I could witness the most powerful female at the time clash against another professional fighter and presumably win, cementing her rights to be blatantly outgoing and excessively motivated, and her rights to be boastful. However I missed the ability to attend said event, and had to wait until after the match to hear the predicted results.

But to my surprise, and mind you it was not a surprise that I went through alone, I was notified that such a figure of power and determination had lost. I had to watch the painful replay of her loss myself to believe what I had heard. And watching the knockout at that moment, I saw not only a 50 pound kick to the head, but I saw the closure of a fixated and hardened mind. I saw the bringing down of both a figure of force and supremacy. And I had lost interest in Ronda immediately. She had advertised herself as a beastly winner, fulfilling promises and proving herself true each time. She became a figure of truth, a figure which instilled hope in me: if I could not achieve what I wanted in life, it was okay, because I had the chance to live my achievements through her achievements. She made possible the realm of dreams, and merging of dreams with reality. She made me feel as though motivation and my mind could coexist in harmony.

Video: The highlights of UFC 193 - Ronda Rousey vs. Holly Holm.

And as shallow and selfish as that sounds, it all fell and withered away with her in the duration of that fight. But I had not known the actual impact of that fight until today, February the 17th, 2016. I watched daytime television for the first time in months, flicking uncomfortably through unappealing shows until I settled into watching The Ellen Degeneres Show. Usually my television set, upon the hit of the information button, would show me a synopsis of the show, and that synopsis would contain a list of guests. That list would determine whether or not I would continue watching it. It no longer contains that, and I had to sit through it if I were to find out who was featured on the show. And so I did.

I had not expected myself to experience the first interview Ronda Rousey was to partake in after her loss, discussing her loss. I thought nothing of it. I sat there staring but not focussing at what was being said. The figure of power who had inflated herself into a blimp-sized figure of mass destruction had deflated, and meant nothing to me. I could no longer seek her interviews for motivation. I was disheartened. And then something strange happened. Something, prior to this, that had scarcely taken place for the viewing of the public. Ronda began to cry. I could not determine how an already deflated ego could deflate some more, however it did, and what occurred stunned me.

Ronda transformed from a regular fighter into a symbol of utter power, to a hollowed and distasteful person of fame, then to a regular human being. Ronda rendered herself, again to my surprise, even more fragile than she was when she lost her fight. She no longer partook in a fight against another human, rather a fight within herself. Ronda exposed at the very moments documented below, how real it is to be human. She expressed the dangers of the cognition of existentialism, as well as expressing her victimisation due to this cognition:

"I was in the medical room, down in the corner and I was like, what am I anymore if I'm not this? I was literally sitting there thinking about killing myself and in that exact second I'm like, I'm nothing, I'm like, what do I do anymore? No one gives a sh*t about me anymore".

Ronda has shown that she is aware of her impact on the world and its peoples. She has displayed her understanding of herself and what she means to her existence, as well as the existence of others. In fact, her existence is defined by others. This is the very denotation of existentialism: to exist and to know of your existence and to be able to distinguish your existence from the existence of others. When one is cognitive of their sense of existentialism, one continuously attempts to live at the expectations contained within their existence. Once one is removed from these expectations, one is lost and rendered fragile.

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Ronda's fragility comforts us. This is why her interview has received a positive response. Humans respond to the fragility of others with a sense of empathy. Empathy is the breeding ground of relation. Through Ronda's fragility, we feel as though we can relate to her, and instead of being the display of strength, she has now turned into the display of the very notion of the existence of a human: to try, to fail, to admit, and to rise above and try again.

Another element which makes Ronda seemingly human and less of a machine is her dependence on another being: Travis Browne. Travis is for Ronda what she was to us when she was headstrong and sure of herself. She became plastered all over the media, she who was for the first time a realistic figure that we not only look up to, but rely on. We are merely a group of ants working for the queen ant that is capitalism, and as slaves we look to strength, preferably the visual kind, so as to let it enter our eyes and fill our sous with the hopes of a better tomorrow. She was the possessor of an ideal mind, and ideal mindset and an ideal way to approach the execution of all hurdles life places before us:

"I looked up and I saw my man, Travis. [He] was standing there and I just looked up at him and I was just like, I need to have his babies. I need to stay alive. [...] I was meant to have him when I was at my lowest".

However bad her knockout, both literal and figurative (in terms of her deflation), Ronda has scattered herself into a pile of ashes, proclaimed her loss of self, and from that proclamation picked herself up, pieced herself together and has risen into a fiery phoenix of motivation, this time with bigger and brighter flames, forcing onlookers to squint and those with their backs turned hold fast to their napes as her flames scorch their ignorance and impartiality. And again we look, but this time after having regained her trust because of her fragility, we do not look up at her, we look up to her. And she recognises that, hence reaffirming her self-efficacy due to her newly transformed sense of motivation:

"I really do believe that I'm still undefeated because being defeated is a choice; everybody has losses in their life but I choose to always be undefeated".

"Good for you", replied Ellen, slapping her hand down on her armchair.

No, Ellen. Good for us. Good for us.

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Kickstart

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For many, university is a place of academia, a step closer to achieving a career goal, and a leap deeper into student debt. That mixture is what I aim for, however what I consider university to be to me is a kickstart back on track with my life.

When I am on a break from university, I feel as though my life is jumbled up. I fall out of any routine that I once had, and I ruin my sleeping and eating patterns. I lose myself again. All the gain that I would have gathered from every sense of my wellbeing flies away from my grip, and I again fall into the well of despair that I annually attempt to pull myself out of.

I celebrate the coming of holidays as much as any other student, though. I finally acquire headspace. I start plotting places to go, things to do, things to see, road trips and projects and such, and I indeed pursue them - the thing is that  pursue them all too fast and they are over early, leaving a lot of time for me to, yes, procrastinate.

I suppose then any course that I choose to undertake in the future, including the courses I have taken and the course that I am taking, are utterly worth the price that I one day must pay back. Along with paying for an access to education, I am paying to get my life together. I am paying for clarity, for direction, for self-worth. 

I have met amazing professionals, most of which still communicate with me to this day. I have been reborn as someone that I never saw myself as being. When I was eighteen years old, I had no idea what I wanted to do, and if one asked me where I saw myself in ten years I would have honestly replied with death. I was in a bad place, mentally, and I saw no light at the end of the tunnel I caught myself in. I did not see a way out, I did not see any educative possibilities. I thought that I would acquire a job and live off whatever job I acquired - I had no luck. I thought that I could live off youth allowance, and I did for a while until they required me to either get a job or study. I went job-hunting again and failed, so I decided to enrol in any mere course. I chose Professional Writing and Editing.

I loved that course, but I was highly distracted with my youth and my inner confusion. I did not know who I was, and I still had no sense of direction. I dropped out of that course when I had not long left to complete it, and sought after Information Technology. I flourished in it. I was the only girl, and that was to my advantage because I always had help whenever I needed it. I excelled in web design, programming and project management - I was beginning to see myself as in I.T. expert, until I had a networking class. I tried to pass but failed, and again, gave up on the course. Then I was stranded.

Until the Diploma of Education Studies came along. I was surprised that I had gotten into it, and I did not take the first semester seriously at all. Something then lit up inside of me when I heard the possibility of being able to get into the Bachelor of Education if I pass the diploma. I suddenly wanted that opportunity. I me into that diploma thinking that I could never get into university, and then I was given the option, and I took that option by the reigns and steered it in one direction: up. Now, I am pleased to say that I am excelling in what I do, and I am enjoying what I do.

But I want more. I hunger for more. The Bachelor has given me a kickstart into the educative life, and it has pushed me to want much more than a teaching job at a local high school. I want to study beyond this and hopefully lecture. I have a dream that one day I will walk into a lecture theatre and place my powerpoint presentation up on the projector and talk about that topic for a whole hour, and later go in-depth for three or so hours. I am education hungry, and I have university to thank for that, for now it has kickstarted my realistic career goals.

Give whatever you doubt a chance, because sometimes the things you doubt turn out to be the things that you need. They could be the colour your life is missing. Unless of course those things are drugs, cigarettes or alcohol, because, you know, they are not good for you.

Underestimation

I have noticed that lately I have been underestimating myself severely. That I have been undermining my ability to perform things that I am otherwise great at. And I have found this is a common thing with everyone.

It is worrying that things are this way, that we position ourselves below our capabilities due to the fact that we judge ourselves more harsher than society judges us. We see ourselves more critically than the general public, and I think that is much more demeaning to one's character than the latter. To judge yourself critically is to shatter your determination, which ultimately destroys your ability to perform in a manner that is great. And I found that today, I did this to myself.

I did this to myself whilst waiting to perform my first ever slam poem, and my first ever public slam poem. For a month I had scrapped the entirety of the poem thinking that it will affect nobody, that it is worse than any slam poem that I have witnessed and that I should give up altogether. Over the course of the month I would add to it, then scrap it, and repeated this process until the night before today's performance. I thought that the hybrid self-portrait I had completed with newspaper clippings that told a story would suffice, but upon second glance of my pieced-together slam poem, I thought otherwise.

And I am glad that I did. I am glad that I decided at the very last minute not to scrap that slam poem, because today, I performed it in front of a crowd of around eighty students. I put myself into the zone that I was aiming for, a zone where I would see faces but not focus on them enough to recognise them and feel embarrassed. I had stood up in front of them all, and managed to deliver the slam poem, otherwise read separately to the clippings on my canvas and read in a fast manner so as to make it sound like a rap song, flawlessly. I thought that I would get tongue-tied, that I would be too cowardly to go ahead with the performance, that I would never amount to the level I placed in my head. But I was wrong.

In fact, I was so wrong that when a student from my class complained that I raised the bar too high, my teacher responded with "don't worry about Nicole. Don't be intimidated by her, that stuff is in her DNA." And that hit me. I went from the most nervous and hopeless wreck to floating high above the expectations of myself and of others, and in the most amazing way possible. There I was, delivering a piece of my very soul and there they were, responding to it in such a positive manner. And I pulled it off so well that they are assuming that greatness runs in my family. It does not. I started it, and I will continue it and ensure its longevity.

And what I was happy with the most was that my slam poem actually resonated within everybody who complimented me for my performance. They actually listened. One man told me that he "did not understand half of the words" but he enjoyed it thoroughly. And even though it was difficult for him and some others to comprehend the long words that I had crafted into my verbal piece, one thing was for certain, that the main message of verbal convergence was sent across and that despite my shaky nerves afterwards which resulted in me virtually bouncing in my seat, I am proud of my achievement today and I will be sure not to ever underestimate myself again.

Inspiring Children

Studying a four-year long course can have its downtimes, especially when it comes to leaving your bed every morning. Studying a course about studying so that you can inspire others to study too can also have its downtimes, yet there are precious gemstones that lie hidden every now and again.

Yesterday, I came across one of these precious gems, at a moment I least expected - the moment right before I left class. I was one of the four left in the class, the other twenty-two having ran off as soon as they handed in their work hours earlier, and my friend and I stayed behind even considering we finished hours earlier, while the other two worked on their essays, attempting to finish before four. Now that all of that was over, we all began packing up our things. Amongst the ruckus caused from the clattering and zipping of bags, a classmate said something to me that will resonate within me throughout my entire teaching career.

"Remember that origami frog you made us make last year for your science presentation?" I had a quick blast to the past in my mind, and recalled the time when I uploaded an instructional video of myself on YouTube making an origami frog for a mini-lesson in class, just in case I stuffed up. My classmates kept up well and truly and were each able to make a paper-frog that could hop around. I did not know, though, that it would still be spoken about a year later. "Yes?" I replied.

"Well," she continued," the other day I happened to be in my niece's bedroom and right up on the top shelf, on display is the frog that I made in your mini-lesson!" I had to stop for a minute to absorb it - how did it get there? Why was it there? "It turns out she kept my frog that I made in your class and she is now so inspired by it that she has ought her own origami kit and is making all these wonderful origami objects!" I could not believe it. A little person that I do not know has been inspired by something I set forth into the world through a minuscule lesson, a lesson that I thought was only for a mere mark that would be forgotten after I had graduated. Boy, was I wrong.

Something that I once thought so little of is now the basis of inspiration for a little girl. Something that I once considered irrelevant to life is now the meaning of life for that little person. Something that I thought was unimportant is now so important for her that she requested that her mother bought her an origami kit, that she took the time to clean her top shelf and reserve a large portion of it for my idea. My mind whirled. And then it dawned on me: we can impact people without even knowing, without even considering it, without even planning it.

I still remember that day. It was such a drag. I did not feel comfortable teaching a lesson. I ddi not feel comfortable standing in front of people I did not know to make them do something that they probably did not want to do. I did not know what to do with the topic I had chosen, which was about the life-cycles of frogs, so I stuck with the idea of folding one and watching it hop across a desk. To my surprise, it ended up hopping into someone's life and changing it for the better. I may have just inspired that little girl to think a little more creatively each time she is faced with a problem. Maybe she may go on to inspire her friends in the classroom to make objects out of scrap paper. Maybe she will become a paper artist, making paper sculptures. Maybe she will become a pop-up book designer. Maybe she will run a paper company. Who knows?

But what I know for certain is that my simple act paved an entirely new path for her. And that is the effect we teachers have on the world. One little footstep at a time, one little activity, one little idea can make a whole heap of new ones. We aspire to inspire. 

Mandatory Meandering

Moving, shifting, ever changing through this journey of life, acquiring scar tissue and bruises and happiness and sadness, all sides of the dodecahedron looking shape we call life, twelve faces for each month of each year that we exist.

What motivates us? What pushes us out of our comfort zones and into places we feared to ever enter? What cradles us in moments of mental agony, when we feel that continuing to breathe cannot be possible? Why is it that most of us push on to an eventual demise, sometimes forgetting that it exists, that life will cease to be at any given time? Ernest Hemingway, my literary lover, said that "it is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end". We all are journeying to our ends, but are we taking the journey itself for granted?

It is difficult during moments of any sort of pain to see any light. The window to one's soul during these moments have their blinds shut tight, so tight that not even the tiniest of sun rays can enter to brighten up their days. In this instance one can fail to see the beauty in the world, one fails to remember their part in the world and the reason for the continuation of their journey. One eventually pulls through, but most of the time one does not. One might then get caught in a vicious cycle of self-hatred, of self-mutilation both in the physical and mental sense, and they may fall short of ever being able to reach the blind's drawstrings.

But we are mandatory. Each one of us. We each teach one another though most of us loathe the idea of school and teachers. We each teach each others lessons though most of us set bad examples. Jeffrey Dahmer taught me not to drug men and bring them back home to my apartment and eat them. Alan Grant taught me never to tour a park populated by live dinosaurs. Carl Denham taught me never to set sail towards Skull Island and on the off chance that I do, to never capture King Kong and bring him back to my hometown. Pinocchio taught me never to want to become a politician in the event of having an extended nose with larger nostrils during the flu season. Every day I am taught something on Tumblr, whether it is to love my body, to hate those who exploit and abuse animals, and to feed bees that appear to be dying sweet water to rejuvenate them. Tumblr also teaches me not to use it around others in the event that a pornographic gif pops up and dances on my phone screen beyond my control, but that is beside the point.

The point is that just like atoms, just like the molecules that make us up, we make up one another. We are crucial to the existence of others, which is why most of us require relationships to thrive, not romantic relationships necessarily. But everyone has someone, even that homeless man down the road who feeds pigeons his scraps even though he needs them to survive himself. The ocean will never feel fulfilled unless it touches daily the sand and fondles its many shells and bathes with its human visitors. The air cannot itself breathe unless it blows through the trees and tickles its many leaves, and it laughs with them and blows off through the branches of many other trees.

We are all interconnected, and though  people discriminate against the internet for taking away our lives, we should rejoice it for allowing us to meander mandatorily in a free manner, and to a larger audience.