Three: The Olympics are a Bad Idea

Verse Three. Six lines. Worth at least two days worth of pondering. Human achievement plus politics, how could those both possibly fit in a weekday morning run?

Part one: The Olympics are a bad idea. Shiny anythings are a bad idea because they will inspire the worst in our fellow people. Jealousy, stealing, and worst of all confusion? Just because there are shiny things out there in limited quantity so that not everyone can have one of everything? What happened to the let go of everything to have all of everything people...I must have my eastern philosophies scrambled.

"Not exalting the gifted prevents quarreling." So we should take down the medals stands. Never race another marathon? Never hand out another National Book Award? Sure, I may not get where some of these sports came from - who on earth dreamed up bobsledding? And I may have no idea how some kid figures out that they are born for biathlon, but lo every four years a whole bunch of 'em get together from all over the world and aim at a target the size of a silver dollar after a series of full-out nordic ski sprints. And one of them wins! Imagine that. And the Olympics only covers the sports I know about...Women do ski jump, by the way. I can only imagine that there are thousands of athletic-competitive pursuits that don't get anywhere near a world stage. Does that mean the practitioner should give it up? Go mainstream? Abandon her dreams? Eat the chess board?

I have a theory that at least some marathoners are born that way. Genetically supposed to run two hours of 5 minute miles. The rest of us do as well as we can with the genetics we've got. So we're supposed to tell the genetic (or determined) chess player, runner, author, painter, musician, to give up being excellent? To give up expression of their unique gifts so that someone else doesn't feel bad for not having those particular gifts? Tell your neighbor not to buy that fancy car to prevent someone else with less impulse control from stealing it? I know, this is kind of an extreme ramble.

But, two things. One, I know kids sports have taken some of the scoring out. And this whole subject brings to mind one of my favorite short stories. In "Harrison Bergeron," Kurt Vonnegut created this world, in which ballet dancers were assigned random weights attached to their bodies to prevent gracefulness; thinkers were assigned random-noise-emitting headphones to prevent thinkiness, the beautiful were marred, everyone was compromised according to his or her gifts. The story does not have a happy ending.

Some are born to sing. To write. To lawyer. To govern (see Verse Three, part two, either tomorrow or Wednesday). To run. To make cakes. To farm. To fly headlong down a slope stopping to perform aerial gymnastics on skis for hours at time, years in a row, culminating in a gold medal and a desire to have a flavor of ice cream named after. Some know from the very beginning what is inside them. Others, blessed with a talent for working hard, wander and contribute where they can, outside of mainstream competition but making a life and finding such rewards as make sense.