Another day spent enjoying the Olympics, but it wasn't without moving, as we also made the trip to the gym, where my wife did a class and I did some stretching and some weights. I have never been able to do the splits, but I used to be much closer than I am able now, so I have decided to add some more flexibility training into my workout.
But it was funny, because not that long ago I was at work tying up my shoelace, and a colleague asked "how can you do that without bending your knees?" I hadn't really thought about it before because it feels really tight in my opinion, but it seems that compared to some others, I am in "okay" shape for my age.
And, in a similar train of thought, we were watching the gymnastics men the other day and there has been a lot of talk in the media (and from my wife) about their bodies, which are fantastic. However, the interesting thing about it is that while all the girls salivate at them on the screen, meeting them in real life is a different story, because they are pretty much all very short. Of course they have to be to be able to do the incredible things they do, but the "too short" conversation comes up often for them, at least it did for the gymnastics guys I knew when younger. The other funny thing was that my wife estimated Simone Biles height to be similar to her own, as my wife is very short herself. But Biles is over 10 centimeters (4 inches) shorter than my wife.
The screen adds 10 centimeters.
Maybe that is why in porn...
But, watching those guys and gals flipping all over the place and spinning at incredible speeds fills me with awe, that humans can actually do that. Smallsteps was watching too and was trying to do some spins on the floor in her socks, thinking she did a comparable job. But there are always lessons involved when watching these kinds of sports, because there are inevitably wobbles and falls, and some smashed the ground very hard. Yet, even after meeting the ground heavily, and the disappointment of thousands of hours of training going to waste, they would get back up, rechalk their hands and finish their routine.
It is amazing.
There are so many little pieces of inspiration from the Olympics, where there are peripheral situations that take place, where athletes help one another, or some background story makes their participation at all a miracle. A lot of what inspires me isn't in the winning of gold, it is in the getting up after failure, or dignity in defeat.
Is the world losing dignity?
Maybe all of the time communicating throug screens rather than face to face, where there is less consequence for digital behaviors, is leading to us not caring as much about what others think. That is the mantra though, isn't it? "Don't care what others think" - which opens up the door for behaving like a dick, doesn't it? When people are predominantly thinking about what pleases themselves with little regard for others, it doesn't create the environment for a strong community, but rather the opposite.
These athletes at the Olympics and in most competitive sports, don't spend their time training and playing against people who don't challenge them. They spend their time in environments that force them to improve, that help them be their best. Yet, the online environment we have created doesn't promote improvement, it encourages staying the same, isolating, loving yourself the way you are today, without having any will to improve for tomorrow.
I will never again be nearly as fit or as flexible as any of the athletes at the Olympics, but based on what I am today, tomorrow I can do something better. It is a huge fallacy that wanting to improve means not liking yourself as you are and in my opinion, the opposite is true. Not wanting to improve as a person means not caring enough about oneself, not being worth it. It doesn't mean we need look for perfection in all that we do, but even as we degrade as we age, we can still get better at something.
But, if we isolate behind screens - who will know we aren't improving?
Dignity isn't held for an audience.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]