In the movie Bend it Like Beckham, Jess is a daughter of a strict Indian couple who was pushed to complete a law degree and marriage instead of living her dream of being a footballer playing organized soccer. The comedy tells of the real struggles between a child’s dreams against the parents’ more conventional expectations.
My daughter comes home from school and often tells me about the blasé attitude she and her peers have about school and social life. Generally, many of her friends are tired and have no idea what they want to do after finishing high school. “Sounds like your friends have no solid direction. They are going through the motions of classes and activities (if they have them) and not seeing the forest for the trees.” Ugh, they are not tree huggers; they are quite driven, dad. “That’s not what I mean. Keeping busy just gets tiring. In fact, the optimal distance between two points is often not a mathematical straight-line. There’s a lot of work, rework and detours—not to mention life’s ups and downs. Look at what it took to win your swim metals: blood, sweat and tears over the years. And that doesn’t include all the times I had to wake up at 4:30am to get you to practice at 5:30!” It’s a long windy road.
The optimal distance between two points is often not a mathematical straight-line. There’s a lot of work, rework and detours—not to mention life’s ups and downs.
In the movie, Jess made sacrifices to play (clandestinely). She kept up with all her school so the parents weren’t suspicious, but she gets no support for her football dreams. Often, parents are preoccupied with their own drama and they default to their own bias and methods (based on how they were raised). And the older the children are, the more the parental autopilot kicks in. But older children are also creative in looking for workarounds to compensate for the support they don’t get.
While Jess’s relationship with her mother has always been taut, she appealed to her father’s emotions to gain support. He was once prevented from playing cricket due to institutionalized racism and Jess’s ascension into a professional European sport was vicarious affirmation that race and gender can be overcome. The movie ends the way most comedies do. Jess was able to build networks and sought sponsors including identifying mentors who were instrumental in helping her break the glass ceiling. There were periods when she felt she was going nowhere but in circles. Her route to success was most definitely not a straight line.
I said to my daughter, her friends need more than to find their own passion and stick to it regardless of external support. Success doesn’t come by consistently working hard or having unwavering willpower. That’s not enough as we see even concrete and steel will crack and bend under direct pressure. Success is also about being resilient, adaptive and bending around the pressure rather than blindly meeting it head on.
