The Flying Scotsman

There is a story about a bike rider.
Who came from Scotland.
A small town in Scotland that the rest of the world had never heard of.
He built a bike from scratch using the laws of physics instead of the latest bikes that were being invented around the world.
His bike included a bearing from the middle of a washing machine.
It was made using riding techniques that had never before been thought of.
The total price of his bike would have been about $50.
He road this bike and won in the world championships for the most velodrome laps ridden in one hour.
He was racing against people who had bikes worth millions of dollars.
He went on to win several more championships for different types of races.

His story is a true story.

Two particular things hit me about this story.

Firstly, this man’s determination.
He trained for hours and hours on end so that he would be capable of standing a chance of breaking the world record. He decided to enter in the world championships just 4 weeks before they commenced. He had four weeks to build a bike and train up to be fit enough to win. And it was his determination to do this, to be a world champion, that let him achieve his goal.

Admittedly, the story was more about how he built his bike and how it shocked the world with its differences. But I was more shocked by Graeme Obree’s determination to be world champion. He did not have much money, coming from a rather poor family in the country of Scotland. But he made sure he got to the championships and he made sure he won them.

I think his story inspired me in terms of determination like no other story has. You hear of real stories of people doing this great thing and people doing that great thing and I just think, Well its all very well for them, they are strong, they can achieve their goals, but I know I can never do that.

Perhaps it was because this story was about bikes.
Perhaps it was because of the way Graeme Obree shocked the world with his different bike.
Perhaps it was because he came from a poorish sort of family.
Perhaps it was because he showed all of the bad as well as the good.

Or perhaps it was because Graeme Obree suffered quite badly from schizophrenia.

His condition was partly a result of being the victim of horrible bullying as a child.
He was made to feel worthless, small and insignificant, a failure, not worth anyone’s times, a waste of space, by four boys who really just needed a self-esteem boost from picking on someone.

When you bully someone who already suffers from depression or schizophrenia or any other type of mental disease that can make one seem like a normal person sometimes, you just make it worse. Most of the time, they already feel like the biggest piece of fucking shit in the world. You don’t need to tell them on top of what they are already telling themselves that they should hate themselves.

Graeme’s disorder drove him to do things that a normal person wouldn’t do.

But I don’t like comparing him to a normal person.
After all, what is normal?

Anyway, I’ll admit, there were a few minutes of the movie that I didn’t watch.
They involved a rope hanging from a tree and a very depressed bullied boy who couldn’t take it anymore.

And I was out of the room.
Not because I don’t really like seeing gruesome things such as suicide.
But because I couldn’t stand seeing a little boy being bullied to the point of suicide.
To the point where he would rather die.
To the point where he wants it all to end.
To the point where the only person who can help him is himself.

I could not stand to watch him hang himself while I just did nothing.
I know I was watching a movie, and that it wasn’t real, and that I knew the little boy grew up to become a world champion bike rider.
But I couldn’t help think that most probably, somewhere in the world right now, someone is committing suicide. And I am doing nothing about it.

I could not understand why those bullies did what they did to that boy. Didn’t they see they were driving him insane? Didn’t they see what they were doing to him?

The answer to that is of course they did.
That’s why they were doing it.
They bullied him because he retaliated. For a normal person, a person without a disability, that’s not so bad. I mean, sure its still pretty bad, but its worse because Graeme couldn’t help but retaliate. That’s what is disability was. Schizophrenia means that a person cannot control their emotions. So Graeme could not control his anger when the other boys bullied him. He could not help but retaliate.

The thing I find sickening is that those boys bullied Graeme because they got a kick out of it. Who cares about how much they were hurting Graeme? Who cares about how they were making Graeme feel? They were happy and that’s all that mattered.

I cannot understand how someone would purposely hurt someone like that. I cannot understand how someone can be so selfish and not care about another person’s feelings. It’s disgusting and cruel and it sickens me.

I think in the end, it’s the bullies that have the mental disabilities, not their victims.
Graeme Obree inspired me.
To pull through and achieve your goals. To not let your emotions run away with you. To have determination. To not let anything get in the way of you doing what you want to.

But most of all, Graeme Obree inspired me to make sure that you control what you want to happen to you. Not anyone else, not other things, not your emotions, but your mind.