2008-08-17 - 12:46 a.m.
Inspire me with your Greatness
************
Despite more than ten years of cynicism and listening to indie rock, I still kind of want to be interested in the Olympics.
Some days I can barely convince myself to study, or to even pretend to study, and I think about people like Alexander the Great and Shoko Asahara (the man behind the Tokyo gas attack) and wonder how they convinced not only themselves but hundreds and thousands of other people to go along with their ridiculous plans. How did Alexander convince an entire army that their campaign had a reason (rather than being the doomed, selfish, impossible dream of a raving megalomaniac)? How did Shoko Asahara convince people that they were giving up their ordinary lives for one of a higher spiritual calling (and not out of laziness and secretly wanting to push their responsibility for themselves onto somebody else, no matter how inconsistent and unpredictable that person may be.) I conclude that they did these things because they were great.
And by great I don’t mean that they were good. (They weren’t.) For the record, I condone picnics, not killing people. By great, I mean that they had the ideas and the nerve and the self-discipline to get what they wanted to do done. They made up their stubborn, selfish minds and they started it and didn’t quit. What’s more impressive than that they were able to do these things, is that they decided them to be worth doing. I mean, a certain level of devotion to anything becomes ridiculous. I think that most intelligent, creative, capable people never actually do anything worthy of their talents simply because it’s hard to think of things to do. (Case in point, I like to think that I’m creative and intelligent and lately I’ve been spending lots of time at the beach, making dioramas, and reading the Mardrus translation of the Thousand and One Nights*, all of which are fun, but none of which have any point.)
Which brings me back to the Olympics. These people have put remarkable devotion into incredibly ridiculous activities. Training hours and hours a day for months on end for the possibility of becoming able to run or swim fractions of second faster. Damn.
I have no desire to live like an Olympian, but I do want to be inspired by their greatness. By which I mean, I want to feel like a lazy slob in comparison to greatness and thus guilt myself into trying to think of better things to do with my time.
I want to know why they do it. Why have they decided to let sports (or anything else) dominate their lives? How do they motivate themselves to keep going when it’s not fun anymore? How do Olympians and other great people deal with things that they don’t like but can’t control? How do they deal with their losses? (Honestly, how do they deal with their losses? Not, how do they think their sponsors want them to say they deal with their losses.)
It annoys me that journalists keep asking everyone the same set of questions, eliciting responses that are predictable, not inspiring. Maybe it’s just me and I’ve become more superficial and prone to checking out what people are doing with themselves style-wise and then making assumptions about them based on that, but it seems like more athletes are putting more thought into what they look like these days. They’re distinguishing themselves. They’re trying to establish identities for themselves beyond just the label of athlete. They are ready for more interesting questions. Journalists, what are you waiting for?
Dear Olympians, mainstream media isn’t satisfying. I’m reading your blogs**. Please inspire me with your greatness.
Sincerely,
ELOFTING@HOTMAIL.COM
* I found Volume One! For ten dollars! At a used book store in Japan! It was like winning the Olympics of used book finding. Now for the other volumes... If anyone should happen to find one that they don’t need (Mardrus and Mathers translation, Routledge Publishing) I want to know says ELOFTING@HOTMAIL.COM
** With one very notable exception named Sherraine Schalm, my blog searching hasn’t been very inspiring thus far, but I’m confident that I’ll inspired by greatness soon. As for Sherraine, she is sarcastic and funny and can (apparently) write a little Latin. She makes fun of the Olympics Committee, compares her relationship with her coach to a marriage, is good at making up new words and apologizes for being trite before she writes something like I-tried-as-hard-as-I-could. Sherraine says that she’s going to write a novel now she’s done with the Olympics and I totally believe her. I, meanwhile, am writing a collection of short stories and will probably play a show soon, though I don’t belief myself and neither should you.
