Ivanka Trump was smiling as she turned in the North Koreans’ direction. It was not clear what she was smiling at, but a White House official said it was not the North Koreans.
Oh hell, we almost had them until she smiled.
Why oh Why is she even there? oh daddy’s favorite kid.
She knows a huge new source of slave labor when she sees one.
Where’s Wonder-Boy? Home minding the kiddies (and filling out the forty-eleventh version of his clearance docs)?
From our earliest memories, we are captured by the athletic spirit and fascinated by the spectacle of sport. For nothing so epitomizes our reach for excellence, delight in our physical abilities, and our highest expression of “higher, faster stronger.”
We are told sports is a crucial element of our development, and not just for the need to attain physical fitness and exercise our muscles with formative stress: through sports we learn to socialize with others, escape temporarily our daily existence and enjoy playing a game in the same way that we find temporary escape and transcendence from mundane reality in the rituals and ceremony of religion, become introduced into the complex relations that bind us with those around us, and gain the confidence in our own abilities and our abilities to compete and interact with others.
In our society, there are few more reviled targets for our moral disapproval that those who were accused of cheating, bad sportsmanship, cowardice, or selling out or betraying a common cause.
Sports also promotes the values of fair play, endurance in the struggle for survival, effort, discipline, restraint, adventure, team spirit, and submission to rules and codes of good conduct – it’s perhaps the most deeply rooted impulse of our life and spirit.
This status can be seen in the world of higher education: the academic accomplishments of our major universities are rarely discussed outside close circles, but the athletic achievements of a university make headlines, attract contributions from alumni and boosters, and trumpet glory in the media.
Ancient Greece, birthplace of western civilization and democracy, reveled in the capabilities of humankind. In contrast to earlier, static depictions of man, Greek artists portrayed the human form in motion – part of a celebration of the dynamic, active, creative principle guiding all people. To compete in the Olympic Games was a fulfillment of the highest ideals of speed, strength and endurance in celebration of a shared race and culture.
The conception of the common man as an agent of his or her own self-fulfillment and destiny has been a rallying cry for all free people, and excellence in the arena was no less prized than heroism in the battlefield.
At times the two became as one. Indeed, legend has it that the name of our longest-distance endurance race descends from the tireless and ultimately tragic exploit of that heroic military messenger who, after making the 26-mile run non-stop from Marathon to Athens to exclaim “We have won!” to the Greek assembly, promptly collapsed and died.
And during periods when the ancient Olympics were held at the sacred competition site in Olympia in Greece, wars were put on hold in order for the best athletes – who were very often also the top soldiers – to gather and compete. Those competitors were also held up as symbols of their respective city-states, and their performances became a way for each athlete’s city-state to promote and proclaim its greatness.
While the games commenced, diplomats and other dignitaries from the various Greek city-states would often take advantage of the neutral Games site in order to initiate informal negotiations that often resulted in suspended wars never resuming after the games were finished.
So there’s always been an aspect of politics and statecraft to the Olympic Games.
The Greeks also had the legend of the Minotaur, another cultural reminder, one that warned all of the monstrous consequences of the subversion of shared ideals in pursuit of private interests and personal gain.
Today, as our relations with each other, with other societies and the larger world around us grow ever complex, sports has taken on a new meaning.
Today, sports has become a big business, mass entertainment, a fixture of our popular culture and, judging by the audience for Sunday football, almost a national religion. It has become an end to itself, rather than a means to enjoy a fuller life. And success in sports can lead to success in life, with all the fame and fortune that entails. But it cannot be the ultimate meaning of life; it is, after all, only a game, and for the athlete life must go on long after the cheering of the crowds stop.
And therein lies the paradox and the challenge: to embody the spirit and lesson of athletics, to give one’s all to that climactic and cathartic moment, both fleeting and eternal, of overcoming the most daunting and stubborn challenge of self-imposed limits, while constrained by the spirit of fair play.
Hemingway, who was drawn to heroes and the sport of bullfighting, prized this ideal and called it grace under pressure.
Just as we do not live to eat but eat to live, just as we cannot live to philosophize but must philosophize in order to live a better life, we must realize that even as we are compelled to play to win, we must not lose sight of the game, which is quite different from the prize.
Whether it’s the thrill of a 60-yard kickoff return, a deftly executed triple axel jump, a soaring pole vault or a Little Leaguer valiantly sliding into third base, excellence in sports inspires a timeless and universal sense of wonder of accomplishment, evokes poetry in motion, and rejoices in one daring, climactic push to the limits of human performance.
But as we search for meaning and purpose in our lives, as we strive to create a world that embodies our highest ideals and promotes the fellowship of all peoples, how do we prepare our athletes of today and tomorrow for the day when the cheering of the crowd stops?