The Olympics, win or lose
It may seem as if everyone’s talking about the Olympics but I’ll add a few thoughts here anyway. Much of the focus, it seems to me, is on who wins and on how many medals each country amasses. Well, it’s a competition so I suppose the results do matter.
I’d like to consider a different aspect of these games. When I witness a human being doing something extraordinarily well, whether it’s diving or sprinting or pole vaulting, it is an astounding sight. To see such balance and mastery, such grace in any creature, can take my breath away. Most of the people we see around us do not really live fully in their bodies in the way these athletes must. We walk strangely, we run in a weird shuffle, perhaps (the joggers down my street seem to be singularly inelegant), and our minds and bodies are rarely in perfect accord with each other. We fumble and hesitate.
The olympians can show us another way of being, where there is harmony between the mind and the muscles. One would call it beauty, except that these days beauty tends to mean film star good looks, while I’m referring to a quality of balance and movement that can take one’s breath away.
Watch for it, whether the competitor wins or loses. You may find it more inspiring than the human interest tales of the athletes that the press like to regale us with. you may find it more important than who wins.
