Perceptions....

Lance...

(This is from my previous blog and the first review of any book that i have written..I love it in many ways..and would find my blog incomplete without this one..so please bear with me...)

I read this book,not because I am a Lance Armstrong fan or I love cycling or even because I follow the sport.I know nothing about cycling whatsoever. But I am happy that I read this book, and I will not tell you the what happened in the book , I will make you read it.

The book is written with raw honesty. The book is not a literary pleasure, where things are put across stubly..it’s raw! candid and straight from the heart,without regret and pretence.

Early in the book Lance Armstrong says “…cancer is the best thing that happened to me.” He goes on to say, “When I was sick I saw more beauty and triumph and truth in a single day than I ever saw in a bike race.”

For people who do not know Lance,he had testicular cancer with 3% changes of survival and he went ahead to win the TOUR DE FRANCE.

A young Lance Armstrong was a tradegy waiting to happen, an extraordinarily gifted man who literally amused himself by playing with fire.He was full of bravado and full of fear. A child long on attitude and raw talent,but short on introspection. He was an unpolished diamond and had a strength . An older Lance Armstrong who writes this now admits that he was a unpolished diamond and had he not been polished with cancer he would have been a very sad case indeed!

As you will read this book,you will realize that it is not about Lance,who became a great athlete.It’s about his journey to a life unknown before. It’s about the realization of those small things that we take for granted. For Lance it was cancer,for you and me it could be a break up, or a career failure. How important are you if you are a parent.How important you are if you are a spouse. How important you are if you are a doctor,a nurse, an ultrasound tech.Most of us find ourselves in some role or the other,it’s the everyday choices that make such an enormous difference.We don’t need cancer to realize that.

Another main point is that,success isn’t bouncing out of bed everyday with a go getter attitude.It’s not even about knowing what your goals are—you have to search for,at each juncture in your life.It’s about slogging through when the attitude is not there,about rising after failures.Some of the things are quite easy to tell.But as Lance describes it, the best thing about survivorship is that “ Those small things that you do every day,like shaving,riding a car to work,having breakfast…you just learn to appreciate them and put the string of things together to give them a pattern called LIFE”

The unspoken prologue,his marriage with Kristen did not last.An illegitimate child,whose mother divorced thrice, he was an independent man with no track record of long lasting relationships.Kristen or Kris as he calls her is an independent and self possessed woman.There marriage was navigated through fame ,the ordeal of becoming parent(lance had testicular cancer and his sperm was stored before the surgery so that he could become a father), and the rigors of professional bicycling.There was this one time that Lance could not manage to beat the odds,even for the sake of his children.There is a point that you feel sorry for him and Kristen, I would be embarrassed to raise the sentiment of the marriage.Both as individuals are past needing the sympathy of strangers like you and me.

posted by shikha @ 10:23 AM