Sochi, Soviets, and Spectacles

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. 

How was your summer?

“How was your summer?” has been reverberating in the hallways of high schools and across college campuses for the past few weeks.  The traditional “What I did on Summer Vacation” essays will have been read, graded, and revised within the next two weeks.   So, how was your summer?  How was your summer?  How was your summer? 

My summer wasn’t great, but it wasn’t bad either.  Like hundreds of thousands of people across the nation, my summer began with the end of school.  I finished my 24^th year in high school on June first.  For sixteen of those years, I was a classroom teacher.  So, a few days, a couple of meetings, and one well-intentioned but always ill-conceived end of the year luncheon after graduation, summer began. Not being a classroom teacher now, though, I work through the summer (like the vast majority of Americans).  The hallways are quieter, but the work continues: testing statistics, best practice research, cleaning out last year’s publications to make room for the next year.  We have things to do over the summer. 

Everybody does:

Vacations.

Cook outs.

Baseball games.

Beach trips.

Family reunions.

We all have things to do over the summer whether or not we work full time during these three precious months.  And, now here we all are at the end, ready to go back and report on how we spent our time.  Perhaps we share some common ground.

I revisited the city where I spent five college years.  I went to two weekend conferences there, and I still agree with myself: this is a great city to live in.  My son, who is a junior there, disagrees and argues that the tenor of the town changes when the undergrads are drunk in the streets.  Yep, I remember.  But, I wouldn’t be a part of that scene if I lived there as an adult.  Still a great place: cultural, gastronomical, athletic, literary opportunities abound.  In between those two weekends, I visited my parents in the town and home where I spent my formative years.  I hung out with a high school friend, a college friend, and a friend of my sister’s.  More traffic there.  I still mostly know my way around there despite an absence of thirteen years.  I feel like I could, indeed, go home again and be quite comfortable. 

Then, I spent some time alone.  Not by design, but due to the fact that eldest son was in summer school, middle son was on a beach trip with friends and then at summer language camp, and youngest son was with his dad.  I found out I can, pretty comfortably, not talk to anyone for hours on end.  A good thing?  I think so.  Middle son was worried that I became anti-social during this time.  Not so.  Also during this time, I was privileged to help a friend who was recovering from surgery.  Yes, I was alone, but I didn’t curl up or wither up.  I did the things that about fifteen years ago I would have lamented never having time to do:  read the whole newspaper, watch the movies I wanted to see, go to the bathroom alone, make exactly what I wanted for supper and then eat it while I read my favorite book.

Finally, it was road trip time.  Ten days up to New York state and back, including lots of points in between with middle son.  It is good to change your surroundings occasionally – from rearranging furniture to just seeing something new outside of the car window – this can refresh your approach to life.  And so it did for me.  We also did some planning for the future; he is a high school senior, and the future looms, inviting him to new places and marking changes for me.

We didn’t go to the beach and, blessedly, I only had to watch one baseball game.  For me this summer was about looking back when we were in Iowa; reviewing the past and the places where I come from.  It was also about discovering peace in the present.  Where I thought there might be panic or fear, I found that I enjoy my own company, and I have dear friends to spend time with.  Finally, in the college visit road trip, I have begun to embrace the future fact that two-thirds of my family will be gone next year at this time. 

Maybe you watched a lot of baseball; maybe you spent weeks at beach or did the family reunion thing.  Perhaps you had an illness to contend with or a wedding that launched you into a new life.  As a teacher and parent, September first has always been more of a New Year than the one in January.  As we enter this New Year, my hope for you is that you embrace what you have learned from the past, you have peace in your present, and some really great plans for the future.  How was your summer?