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Mon. Aug 30, 2004

Efharisto, Greece!

Each time the Olympics come around, I have to reacquaint myself with the fact that the Games mean something quite different to me than to most people. I’ve written a bit before about my own background with the Olympics, and try to see it like those who grew up playing baseball, and are enraptured with the World Series (which moves me little). To a lot of people, these Games primarily meant they didn’t get to watch their soap operas, day time talk shows, or prime time reruns.

But these Games haven’t just provided me with a 16 day respite from stories of Swift Boats and Slow Candidates (though that has been refreshingly welcome). They recharge me. They literally refill me with hope for the human race.

And I will take as much of that as I can soak up. I need every drop of it. I briefly noted each quiet tear I unexpectedly shed while watching some small event in the past 16 days, because they reminded me there’s still a human somewhere inside this cynical curmudgeon. One who can still be quickly moved by the simplest things.

Yes, I’m a total sap over these Games. Gladly. Offer me an alternative that brings every nation of the world together in the same place, people of every shape, size, color, religion, and ethnicity, all to celebrate the marvel of human capability.

Name one.

Yes, I deliberately tune out much of the parasitic dreck, from the Costas-Couric verbal garroting of the Opening Ceremonies (notice they were both absent at the Closing Ceremonies?), to the sometimes excessive commercialism and nationalism, to the ever present pomposity of the IOC, and even the occasional athlete who just … doesn’t ... get it (I’m talkin’ to you, LeBron James). I try to filter out the irrelevant, and focus on the performances. The faces of the athletes. It can be that simple.

Because that’s where I feel some strange empathy. I see the joy on their face, often in the form of tears, and I absorb a tiny piece of it. That’s the only way I can describe it. From the other side of the world, through a tiny TV screen, on tape delay … a little piece of that goes into my heart, and often into my throat. Not every time, not even most of the time. It’s most precious when their joy is from a third place finish, or even fourth … the obvious satisfaction you see on the face of someone who has completed a life long dream. To have competed against the best in the world, to have done your best, and to be happy with the outcome, no matter what it might be. That kind of genuine unfakable joy, I genuinely feel that in a way I can’t quite describe.

There were so many concerns leading up to these Games in Athens, so many who were worried they would be a disaster, or, at best, an embarrassment. Perhaps those concerns and worries seemed justified at the time, but in the end, the Greeks once again brought us Olympic Magic, as only the Greeks could do. If the Games could have a permanent location, this is where they truly belong.

So efharisto to the people of Athens and Greece, and the over 35,000 volunteers … Efharisto to the over 10,000 athletes … Thank You for refilling this old curmudgeon.

I was definitely a quart low.