Friday, March 03, 2006

Everyday Olympians

The Olympics are over, and, good riddance, I say. I’m not grousing about the slushy Italian snow, or the bad behavior of certain athletes.  No, I’m just always irritated by the very thesis of the Olympics: “Remember, these people are better than you.” I watched some of the opening ceremonies with a roomful of middle-schoolers during the early hours of a sleep-over at our house.  They smashed popcorn into their mouths and guzzled root beer as the camera zoomed around Italian mountain peaks, the music soared, and the announcer intoned platitudes: “The Olympians train like champions, make sacrifices like champions, and push themselves beyond the very limits of human endurance ...” “Okay, okay, we get it!” my daughter shouted back at the TV, “The Olympics are hard! Really, really hard!”

The kids had had enough.  Rather than listen to more one-upsmanship, they switched on a favorite DVD for the billionth time, and talked about something that truly pushes the envelope of human endurance – hello? the daily lives of middle schoolers.  Honestly, do we really think slipping around for a few minutes on a half pipe compares to enduring the ritual humiliation of a bus-ride to school, not to mention the following hours of mean pop quizzes, and locker room embarrassments?  And what about the delicate emotional footwork required to survive cafeteria interchanges in which tweenagers can go from being totally crushed out over one another to being completely disgusted and in tears, without ever exchanging a word?  Talk about the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat”! Good golly – wouldn’t you rather be shoved head-first down an icy toboggan track than endure one day of middle school?

Listening to the kids talk, I was reminded of how much effort it takes, sometimes, just to make it through a regular day. And do we get rewarded?  Noooo.  Sometimes, when I’m complaining about the obstacles that make certain days feel like a slalom with moguls the size of Hummers, I can hear a sneering voice saying, “Oh, poor you – whaddaya want, a bleepin’ medal?” And some unattractive part of me says, too-eagerly, “Why, YES, I do!  I do deserve a medal for packing the school lunches for the zillionth time and finding the lost mitten and answering that nasty email with a polite one and for responding to a hundred other crises with my sanity mostly intact. I’m still standing here, aren’t I?  If that doesn’t earn me a bleepin’ medal, I don’t know what should!”

Truly, any one of us might design Olympic events from the madhouses of our own lives that would put the rigors of the triple-lutz to shame. Imagine challenging one of those sleekly suited athletes in your own daily triathalons – maybe it would be back-to-back meetings that make you want to shove your pencil through your eyeballs, and then a down-to-the-second race to prepare a presentation with a last-minute jam at the Xerox machine or a malfunction of the jump drive holding your Power Point. Or maybe the competition would be something less dramatic but far more strength-sapping, like enduring a day at home with whiny, strep-throated children, or bravely facing the stinkiest piles of laundry, or forcing yourself to do a full grocery store run when all you really want is beer and ice cream. Who recognizes these mundane triumphs that keep us all moving forward?

My favorite Jane Austen quotation is from the attention-craving Mrs. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, who grouses, “Those who do not complain are never pitied.” She’s small-minded and unsympathetic, yes, but doesn’t some unlovely part of all of us identify with her desire to be pitied and praised just for making it through the day?

The linguist Deborah Tannen has written a terrific new book called You’re Wearing That? about the ways mothers and daughters talk to one another, but her insights about what people really want from conversations apply to all of us.  Tannen recounts dozens of well-meaning conversations gone suddenly, desperately wrong because of mis-heard intent. Perhaps most common is the conversation in which one speaker complains at length about the busyness of her life – the endless “to do” list, the frustration, the exhaustion – and the respondent, instead of sympathizing, simply says, “So, don’t take on so much if you can’t handle it.” Now, haven’t you been on one side or the other of such an exchange?  Why do we crave recognition for simply living our lives?  And why do we begrudge others that simple, meaningful recognition?

After all, Olympic heroes come along only once every few years. But here are the rest of us, every day accomplishing feats of endurance – shuffling the papers that keep our lives in order, putting out the garbage, raising children, fixing leaky pipes, thinking up entrees for supper, talking with a lonely neighbor, and performing a dozen acts of courage that should, in a just world, earn us a place on a medal platform.

We can live without the luge, but the hero who makes sure there’s still toilet paper in the house?  That everyday Olympian deserves the gold.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on March 03, 2006
Education • Family & Friends • Sports & Recreation • Work • Permalink • Printer Friendly
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