Olympic Games

A blog, I am told, is a dairy kept 'online'. Ergo Olympics. I like Olympic Games. They bring out the best in people. In about 10,000 people. Perhaps a few more. Then there are the organizers and the volunteers. They all inspire the youths. The rest are the hungers-on, the leaches, feeding off the successes, sometimes even failures, of others. They are the crowds. The masses looking for vicarious pleasure derived from the efforts of others.

They are the faceless. The dead.

I know. Once or twice I was among them.

Yet the moments of victory are still sweet to an outsider. They prove that, given sufficient effort one can conquer the world’s best, one can conquer ones own reticent willingness to sacrifice all to be the best that one can be. Even for a moment. Even once in a lifetime.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that it takes just one’s body, one’s physique to achieve a gold medal. Before you can force your muscles to obey your vision you must see yourself victorious. You must believe that you can do it. That you can be the best. Your faith must be unshakable. Perhaps greater than a grain of mustard seed.

That is how the medals are won. In your heart. You prepare your body as best you can and then you have faith that you can do it. But, not all are like that.

Volleyball used to be one of my favourite sports. No more. Now, a bunch of very tall women spend most of their time patting each other on the back, or buttocks, giving each other high-fives, often high-tens—not at the end of the match but after every point.

I left my TV to wait for a different sport.

An hour later I turned. The match was still on. Must have been—the behaviour of athletes was identical… only this time they were men. Tall, bearded men—patting each other on the back, on buttocks, giving each other high-fives, often high-tens, after every single point.

Girls will be girls, I thought.

On anther channel I found screaming banshees on the tennis court.

And then there were the masses. Having nothing to do, they roared. Why not, they paid for the privilege of seeing the best. And finally there was the closing ceremony. The indescribable noise made by male and female members of dubious species was the final stroke. Some 80,000 of them? Another billion or so, glued to their TV, with volume turned up. The enormous stadium displayed hundreds of performers devoid of any talent, but well suited to the mob, which wanted to be entertained at a manner they were used to. At a level that did not require listening, at which the noise they continuously generated themselves would preclude any semblance of art or music. Mozart is dead—God save the Spice Girls.

They were right. They missed nothing.

There was neither art not music. Just a vulgar, ear-splitting regurgitation of aural and visual noise. The ‘green’ Olympics were covered by a thick layer of smoke generated by the endless forays of fireworks. Children like that. Bedlam. For a moment I thought myself in Pandemonium, in the capital of Hell.

I clicked off my TV.

For a while I enjoyed the bliss of silence. Then, silently, I thanked the 10,000 athletes, the 10,000 supermen and superwomen, for their efforts.

Then I picked up my book.