Win Win Win: Ever More Glory from the Olympics

I don’t know since when, but it seems life has become all about winning. Among everything, right now there is all the fuzz about winning in the Olympics.

Simultaneously as I marvel at the amazing abilities these athletes, I cannot help but feel the meaning of the Olympics is lost. (As for the stories about the lip-sync’ed girl, CG fireworks aside… don’t get me started… )

With an earthly population where the majority barely moves their butts and feet each day and a good fraction who can barely run, I wonder how many can truly appreciate the spectacle performed by these athletes. I really wonder. Not very many is my guess. This is more reassured from observing how the Chinese runner, Liu Xiang, got cast away by so many of his very own people, as if he himself is not in enough anguish for his inability to participate already — something he trained day in and day out for. Yet many are inhesitant to criticize him. But I digress.

As a bit of an athlete myself, I fully understand the hard work, focus, discipline, pain and sacrifice they had to go through for training to reach such level. If without such appreciation that people are watching the Olympics, I wonder why people are so glued to the Olympics. Some even pull all-nighters. Risk dozing off at work. Perhaps a dire need for distraction and a cause for celebration from mundane life? Or perhaps watching and hoping athletes from their very own nation, “their own people”, win some medals in order to share in the glory? Or it could be for pure entertainment, I suppose.

In my (simple) mind, the Olympics carries a meaning that is analogous to what Jet Li tries to convey with Wushu, a.k.a martial arts. You can also call it sportsmanship. All in all, it is about improvement of the soul, mind, and body. It is about the time and energy spent in learning something and consequently train those three things. And with such process, it brings out the best of us, builds characters in people, creates a mutual understanding, brings unity among humanity, and allows for both external and internal peace. Too much for you? I still believe that is the ideal.

But it seems the focus has been shifted a little too much to the winning of the medals. I understand the celebration of winning and achieving you fight so hard for, but it just seems to be ALL about winning. What does that says about the Olympics? It makes it almost no different than the way of capitalistic and materialistic world. Always about winning and getting more, MORE!

Like martial art satisfies people’s thirst for violence and gore, currently the Olympics quench people’s (nation’s) dire thirst to conquer and beat out each other and at the same time, the population received temporary cure for their need of excitement and fun — things that they forever seek — and perhaps distraction, or maybe a different form of TV entertainment.

As the true meaning of Wushu is not readily understood, the idea of sportsmanship is not very visible in the very event that symbolizes it.

Thank you for reading my rant.

Originally posted 2008-08-20 23:09:57. Republished by Blog Post Promoter