Highlights and Lowlights ~ A picture of life's struggles

The Olympics are drawing to a close. Soon the flame will be extinguished and all the the athletes will return to their own countries and resume their lives.

For some that life will be the same. They'll work, practice, strive to be better and faster while dealing with the other family and survival stuff that life requires.

For many others, life has been irrevocably changed. Some will have the glow of accomplishment pushing them to new heights, new experiences, and abundant opportunities. Others will start a new life without relentless athletic pursuit, but with the satisfaction of a job well done.

Then there are the ones who didn't quite succeed, at least not by some standards. The ones who have to decide whether or not to pour four more years of blood, sweat, and tears into their sport. Can they get closer to their dream? Is it worth it?

The Ups

One of my favorite thing about the Olympics is seeing the great accomplishments. Some of my favorite moments from the London games:

May and Walsh in Beijing Olympics Wikimedia Commons

       - Great Britain's gymnastics men winning the bronze medal.
       - Missy Franklin's first gold medal
       - Women's gymnastics team gold including that amazing vault by McKayla Maroney.
       - Aly Raisman's gold on the floor event finals - stunning routine!
       - Grenada's first medal ever - and it was gold!
       - Mo Farah winning the 10,000m run with his US training partner in second.
       - The double amputee from South Africa making the semi-finals in the 400m race.
       - Walsh-Jennings and May-Traenor winning their third gold medal.
       - The handful of women from countries that had never before sent women to the games.
       - Great Britain's celebration after coming in first and second in the two-man white-water canoeing
       - Phelps. 'Nuff said.

Not all of these moments were golden moments, but for the people living them they were accomplishments beyond anything they'd dreamed of before.

The Olympics are full of moments like that. People who are thrilled just to be there. Athletes who do their personal best, even if that wasn't enough to make the finals.

The Downs

McKayla Maroney Wikimedia Commons

Unfortunately, when there is a winner, there is also a loser. And while there are people ecstatic just to get on the podium there are many athletes that had golden dreams, a desire to hear their national anthem played for millions because they had excelled.

Some of the hardest moments to watch in these games?

       - Jordan Weiber missing the all-around, though points for coming back and busting it out in the team finals!
       - McKayla Maroney landing on her backside in the vault finals.
       - The USA men losing in the beach volleyball semi-finals
       - The woman from Qatar pulling up injured in the 100m prelims
       - All of the other people for whom injuries kept them from even finishing their Olympic moment
       - The US men falling apart in the gymnastics finals
       - The disqualified badminton players



The Olympic Spirit

But that's part of the Olympics. The ups, the downs, and everything in between. The disappointment would not be so bitter if the reward were not so sweet. The history, the legend, the mark left on your particular sport that the Olympics allows people to achieve.

Phelps made incredible, potentially unbreakable history. Though the argument could be said that Missy Franklin has set herself up for the potential to bust his new record.

While your day to day victories might not gain national media attention or garner a small fortune around your neck, there is something to be learned from the Olympics.

Triumph is not always easily won or expected, but it should always be celebrated.

Defeat may be hard to swallow but sometimes you have to "buck up" as my dad says as get the next job done.

There is pride in the fact that, even if you didn't finish, you still beat everyone who didn't start.


What were some of your favorite or most poignant moments of the games?

The Excitement of Enduring ~ Life Lessons From The Olympics

Two of my absolute favorite moments over the weekend came from the most unexpected events.

I've never been thrilled with the really long races in either the pool or on the track. I guess I want more action  than that. I want to wonder who's going to win. Frequently in endurance races, the outcome is clear well before the race is actually over.

Saturday, I didn't care.

Did you watch Katie Ledecky win the 800m freestyle? Incredible. Absolutely incredible!

100m freestyle in 1912. Swimming has come a long way since then. Photo from Wiki Commons.

The best part was hearing the announcers saying she was messing up for going so fast. They said that even her coaches were talking about how she needed to let up for the first few hundred meters, save her energy, let the veterans set the pace.

Sometimes it's great to see the people who "know" get proven wrong. It was clear well before she touched the wall that Katie Ledecky was going to win the gold medal, but that didn't make it any less exciting to watch. Fifteen years old and saying to all of those who think they know better, "Just watch. I know what I'm doing."

And then the men's 10,000m run. Never would I have thought I'd be gripped by a group of men running in circles for six and half miles. Watching Farah win, knowing the importance of his race to the country, and then his US training partner coming from behind to take second. It was wild.

The race was so close. Watching them sprint for the finish you would have thought the race had been 400 meters instead of 10,000.

I don't think I had ever appreciated the skill of endurance more than those two moments.

Mo Farah running for Great Britain. Photo from Wiki Commons.

Maybe it's because I'm older. I appreciate the fact that sometimes it takes longer to accomplish things. I look at how long most authors have to endure before they get published, and I realize that it's a race that requires staying power and longevity.

Life requires staying power. Losing weight, learning a new skill, obtaining a degree or promotion, all of these things take time and are done little by little.

Ledecky didn't jump into the pool twenty meters before everyone else. She just slowly built her lead until her triumph was awesome, even to her competitors. Farah didn't lead until the very end, but he kept at it, knowing what he was capable of, knowing that it wasn't who led for 9,500 meters, but who crossed the finish line first.

Are there things in your life that require endurance? Long term goals that require short frequent steps to reach? Don't give up. Hang in there and you can do it.

For the Love of the Game ~ Life Lessons from the Olympics

Swimming is drawing to a close in the Olympic games. Of all the incredible athletes and stories, Missy Franklin has caught a great deal of my attention.

What I find most incredible is that she has turned down sponsors and endorsement offers in order to maintain her eligibility to swim with her high school swim team.

Not Missy Franklin, but a kid that looks very happy to be swimming. ;)

Can you imagine? Lining up on the blocks at a high school swim meet and seeing an Olympic gold medalist to your left would be incredibly intimidating.

Most likely Missy has many years of swimming prowess to cash in on, but to turn down potentially millions as a teenager boggles the mind. It's possible, and even probable, that after the Olympics she won't swim her senior year swim team, but the fact that she did it last year is enough to show her love of the game.

She still has plans to turn down endorsement offers in order to swim in college.

So often we look at what's in it for us, or we think, my skill level is higher/lower than the other people involved, so why should I contribute? Sometimes we need to just do it because we enjoy it.

Have you ever loved something enough that you just wanted to participate as much as you could?

Should You Quit While You're Ahead? ~ Life Lessons From The Olympics

Phelps with one of his Beijing Gold Medals

Have you been following the Olympics? If you have then you saw the unthinkable happen in the pool Saturday. Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte, head to head in the 400m IM (That's the one where they go back and forth four times with four different strokes.) Phelps and Lochte were expected to duel it out for gold and silver, leaving everyone else to chase the bronze.

That isn't what happened.

Instead, Phelps barely scraped into the finals and didn't manage to make it onto the medal stand at all.

Does that less than spectacular showing take anything away from his stellar performance four years ago?

Or consider Nastia Liukin, the winner of the gold medal in women's gymnastics individual all around competition in Beijing. She attempted to make the team again this year and was unsuccessful.

Nastia Liukin at 2008 National Championships (Photo by TheBostonianLonghorn)

Do people now think less of her as a gymnast because she was unable to achieve the same thing she had four years prior?

Unfortunately, for some people it does.

I was sitting next to my brother when Phelps touched the wall fourth in his race. He remarked, "Well, there goes Phelps."

Two of the most amazing athletes of the past decade and their memory could be forever marred by the fact that their last attempts were not as incredible as their most successful one.

That begs the question, should you quit while you're ahead? For most things, I think no. If you're a person who gambles, however, it's probably pretty sound advice.

Personally, I applaud Liukin and Phelps for continuing in their sports. Why should an incredible accomplishment mark the end of a career?

What if JK Rowling never wrote another book? What is George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had stopped making movies after their first big hits?

No one expects actors to stop acting just because they won an Oscar, so I'm not sure where this idea that athletes should stop at the height of their game came from. I don't think we should ever stop doing what we are passionate about and what we love.

What do you think? Has Phelps diminished in your view because of his loss? Do you think people should stop while they're ahead, leaving the last impression as a spectacular one?

IT'S HERE!!!

So I know I'm supposed to be turning some mundane experience into an insightful and interesting life lesson. Today, however, I can only offer you this...

IT'S HERE! IT'S HERE! IT'S HERE!

Yes, people, the Olympics starts today and I could not be more excited. I adore the Olympics. I don't really watch sports any other time. Even the same sports that occur during the Olympics don't grip me - though I'll watch the occasional gymnastics competition. There's just something about the Olympics... Every two years I soak it all up.

So get ready, faithful readers! There will probably be a few extra posts coming your way over the next two weeks. And you can join me over on my Facebook page where I'll be glad to discuss the events surrounding the rings with you.

Quantifiable Q's ~ Life Lessons from the Olympics ~ A to Z Blog Challenge

For the A to Z Challenge, I’ve been doing my daily post without the letter of the day. Q doesn’t seem like much of a challenge, so I shall flip it and put as many ‘q’ words as possible in today’s post. Get your dictionaries ready and remember that I am having to use some of these words with a very loose definition in order to get as many Q words as possible into the post.

Quick! Quantify the number of days until a quorum of countries send representatives of quintessential athletic prowess to qualify for the Olympic Games. What quantity do you get? The question’s answer is an unequivocal ninety-nine.

Yes! Quality athletes, such as equestrians, will enter the quandary that is the Games in just over a quarter of a cycle of equinoxes. If a quiz queried you on the quarters of this quest to squash competitors and win gold, could you quickly equate the answer with London, England? If so, you’d be quite correct!  

The Olympics equates with world tranquility for a quantum amount of people. This piques me to pick up quill and question why.  

Life does not possess ubiquitous laws of etiquette. The Games do. There is a quirk that compels the clique of athletes to equip themselves to quote the rules correctly, regardless of mosques or faquirs or even quaint political views. The Olympics conquers boundaries. There is a quest with clearly written requirements that quarrel not with everyday life but conquers the banquet of a single competition.

When we bequest our lives to quivers of compartments,  we don’t quibble at the squads of strictures and rules we square off with within each quay. It’s queen of why we squeak “Don’t cuss,  you’re in church!”

We queue up a quilt of quips that require different rules for the quasi compartments of our lives without a qualm. This quells unrest occasionally, acquiring pockets of peace, while bequeathing others cirques with oceans of vulnerability.

The quiet facade of The Games has been chequered  with bitter, vengeful tragedy before. Squelch the compartments when you can. Life has a way of conquering the edges.

So.... this was pretty difficult. I hope my idea came across. If not, well, I’ll probably make another go at it when the Olympics comes around. Check out other A to Z participants using the link below.