Last week in this journal fellow columnist Philip Galanis reflected on the "miasma of mediocrity" that is a stranglehold on The Bahamas: "At almost every turn in our daily lives, we are deluged by a miasma of mediocrity. Our society, on so many fronts, appears to be intractably inundated by an attitude that reflects that there is really no need to excel in our undertakings and that, if we just perform satisfactorily, everyone should be happy."
This brings to mind a parable of the conch salad stands. There were two conch salad stands in close proximity. The owner of the first stand had been in business for years with no competition in the neighborhood.
One day another stand moved in across the street, upping the ante, marketing itself as a hip and happening spot, a place for locals and visitors to chill for fun and fellowship and flirting.
The new stand offered a nicer setting, with soft drinks and spirits as well as a variety of conch salads including with tropical fruits. Some days the proprietor of the old stand had no conch and watched forlornly as the competition attracted his business.
The new stand swelled with business while the old stand failed to up its game, watching the new business grow oh so much that it outgrew its premises and had so much business that the waiting time for orders grew quite long, frustrating customers and making the new stand vulnerable to competition. We are often content with just getting by, with the least effort possible, with slackness, with believing that poor or mediocre are acceptable.
The old conch salad stand will languish and the new one will stagnate in the face of newer competition unless there is consistently good service and innovation. The older business is representative of the miasma of mediocrity engulfing and suffocating our progress as a people and our national development. The parable of the conch salad stands offers a lesson on two ingredients necessary for success and excellence: consistency and innovation.
Abundance
Given our size as a country The Bahamas has produced an abundance of extraordinary talent. But how much of our world-class talent is wasted or never fully realized because of a lack of recognition or encouragement or opportunity? And why have we not more fully utilized the rich and diverse talent pool of a Bahamian Diaspora that has achieved success in areas ranging from the sciences to commerce and the arts?
How often do our mediocre expectations hamper the flowering of extraordinary talent? Why have we often failed to celebrate the native genius within as represented by brilliant and beautiful minds such as the late Tony McKay?
Bert Williams was born in The Bahamas in 1874. He left his homeland for the United States at around the age of 10. By the time of his death in 1922, he was considered "one of the greatest comedians of the world" and "by far the best-selling black recording artist before 1920".
Comedian W.C. Fields considered Williams a comic genius. Williams was not one of the most notable black entertainers of his generation. He was simply one of the best entertainers of his generation.
Though Sidney Poitier is more well-known today, Williams broke more ground than the former, achieving phenomenal success as a recording artist, becoming one of the highest paid artists in the world at the time. He was a film actor who also produced, directed and starred in a silent film of his own. He performed on Broadway with the Ziegfeld Follies and did a command performance at Buckingham Palace. Though stymied by the vicious racism of his time, Williams broke many barriers. Many commented on the remarkable degree to which Williams kept innovating, honing his excellence through not only dogged practice but also by trying new things, by improvising, by expanding his repertoire.
Consistency and innovation by Bahamian talent in pursuit of excellence can be found today in the person of Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace, who can now claim to be the fastest female swimmer in the Western Hemisphere having set the Pan American Games record on the way to winning a gold medal in the 50 meter freestyle in what is currently the fourth-fastest time in the world. She also won a bronze medal in the 100 meter freestyle at the same games in Canada. Besides the record book in The Bahamas, her fastest times in the 50 and 100 meter freestyle events would be national records in most countries including Canada.
Fastest
Vanderpool-Wallace is also the former United States and NCAA record holder in the 100 yard freestyle and still holds the second-fastest time in history in the 50 yard freestyle in the United States. She was the first swimmer in NCAA history to swim the 100 yard freestyle in under 47 seconds. She still has the fastest relay split ever for a woman while becoming the first woman in United States history to swim a 50 yard relay leg in a time under 21 seconds (20.80). In 2011, she was one of three finalists for the Honda award for National Swimmer of the Year in the United States.
This 25-year-old, who started her swimming career as a nine year old in The Bahamas, never dreamt that she would one day be on top in any event among the most competitive swimming nations on Earth. Vanderpool-Wallace has already qualified for and participated in two summer Olympic Games for The Bahamas, becoming the first woman from The Bahamas ever to make a semi-final and final in a swimming event and being ranked as high as third in the world in one of her events. Besides becoming the youngest person from The Bahamas to ever qualify for an Olympic event, she has also become the first Bahamian ever to win a medal at a World Swimming Championship, a feat that she accomplished with a bronze medal in December 2010.
In 2014 Vanderpool-Wallace had the distinction of serving as the flag bearer for the Commonwealth Games for The Bahamas and also winning the Bahamas' first ever medal in swimming at those games. She eagerly thanks "those successful swimmers from The Bahamas, Jeremy Knowles and Alana Dillette, in particular, whose success ahead of me at Auburn was the motivation for me to attend Auburn University in the first place and who were also such an inspiration during my formative years in swimming.
"I was also fortunate to have the best coaching anywhere at every stage of my swimming career including my mother during my early years." She recognizes the debt that she owes to her grandparents who introduced her mother to the sport of swimming. Were it not for that introduction so long ago, it is highly unlikely that she would have discovered her talent as a swimmer. Many of Vanderpool-Wallace's early years were spent as a competitor for The Bahamas in the CARIFTA swimming championships for which she still holds individual and relay records.
Distinction
She holds the distinction at CARIFTA of winning every freestyle swimming event in her age group (50, 100, 200, 400 and 800 meters) two years in a row. At the recent Central American and Caribbean Games in November 2014, she returned with four gold medals for her four individual events. The sport of competitive swimming is arguably one of the most disciplined of sports because of the daily routines required.
Vanderpool-Wallace not only showed the capacity to endure those training rigors from an early age, she also displayed a competitive streak that has been identified and lauded by her coaches since her beginning: She hates to lose more than she loves to win. That trait propelled her to work incessantly on elements of her routine that could result in consistently removing a few hundredths of a second, with such minor improvements making a significant difference in her final results. For someone who hates to lose, it did not take long for coaches in her latter years to come to the clever conclusion to have her train as often as possible with male swimmers. For her, there was nothing more motivating than figuring out ways to stop losing every day.
Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace has never settled for mediocre. She understood early the lessons of the two conch salad stands. Competition helps us to be our very best and the pursuit of excellence requires consistency, persistence and resilience as well as constant innovation. There is a line from a Hollywood actress from years ago that went something like this: I tried my hardest and achieved my best. But that was not good enough so I'll have to try harder.
We are a country blessed with talent in fields ranging from athletics to academia to the arts. But to turn this talent into achievement, to break out of our miasma of mediocrity we may draw inspiration from the example of Bahamian achievers like Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace and others like her who make us proud to be Bahamian.
o frontporchguardian@gmail.com, www.bahamapundit.com.
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