I love the Olympic Games.
Not the get-up-at-three-in-the-morning-to-watch-women’s-hockey love, but
the I-will-tune-in-each-night-and-actually-read-the-sports-section love. As with other games, there is plenty of
rumor, innuendo, and political talk swirling around the Sochi Games. This happens every year – think China’s human
rights record; think 1936 Munich; think 2002 Salt Lake City bribing
inquiry. Still, thanks to the athletes,
the Olympic spirit overcomes almost all negativity to allow the competition and
camaraderie to shine most brightly by the closing ceremonies.
I have been following the Sochi games with a pointed
interest. The #sochiproblems on Twitter
took up thirty minutes of my time yesterday afternoon. If even half of those problems are real, my
response is: yep, that’s Russia. Russia is its own thing. I know.
I lived there. More precisely, I
lived in Soviet Russia in 1990 and 1991.
Russia is Russia. There’s no real
way to describe it.
Last night the announcers at the opening ceremonies tried to
summarize Russia with banalities about the number of time zones and how long it
takes to fly from one side to the other.
The opening performance was an overview of Russian history. Wow.
That’s quite an undertaking for a country that seems to still have some
hotel issues: yellow water (normal for Russia, but don’t drink it) and toilet
flushing delays (normal – just be patient).
The opening ceremony spectacle was fine – albeit overreaching
in trying to summarize Russia’s vast history into twenty or so minutes. The thing knocked me off the couch was, as
the post-World War II Soviet period was being depicted, an announcer commented
that it was “ok to be nostalgic for Soviet times.”
What? Nostalgic for
repression? Disappeared family members? Forced labor? Communal apartments? Midnight arrests? Paranoia?
Food shortages? Maybe he was
referring to the forced order that defined the appearance of Soviet life? I’m hoping that whoever that announcer was
instantly – or at least eventually – regretted that comment. I’m trusting that the announcer was simply
filled with an over-romanticism of all things Russian and Soviet, given the
setting and performance.
We do have a tendency to do that. Things in the past were somehow easier, cleaner,
more stable, or better – weren’t they? It’s
not true. Things in the past were
muddled, confusing, challenging, happy, and scary. Just like they are today. We
also do this: things will be better, calmer, happier, more stable in the future
when I just_____ (fill in the blank).
Having the blank filled in does not guarantee no more flat tires or no
more burnt pizza crust – it simply denotes that the thing in the blank will
have happened.
Mindfulness. Living in
the moment. The present is a gift. Use whatever cliché you want to, but one of
the main successes of living is doing just that: living.
Now. Recognize and honor the past,
but leave it alone. Have goals and
dreams for the future. But live.
Now. Psychologists suggest that romanticizing
the past might mean that the present is unhappy and the future is scary. Certainly that is true in international politics. Things change over time – for the better and
the worse. But, there’s no point in
bemoaning and dramatizing such shifts, personally or globally. We all must adjust. The Russian people have been doing just this
for millennia, and they will continue doing so, just as we all will. The question is: how will we do it?
Will we be overly nostalgic for times that had their own ups and
downs?
Might we look anxiously ahead in our planner to try to
control what waits around the corner?
Or, perhaps, we might just want to enjoy and participate in
the spectacle that is life.
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