Enjoy our weeklong series leading up to the Summer Games!
When I was growing up, summers were spent with my family in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, where Oak trees give way to Pines. I grew to notice how pine needles smelled when they baked in the hot afternoon sun and how different they smelled during a mountain thunderstorm. Most of my days were spent reading, playing pee-wee golf, hiking in the woods, and splashing around in a nearby lake. Each day had its own small adventures, but every day was often like the ones that came before and those that followed.
That held true except for two weeks every four years. That’s when the athletes of the Olympic games changed my summer days and filled them with competition and daydreaming. In 1972, after watching Mark Spitz win gold after gold, I transformed my splashing in the lake to something more disciplined and structured: racing my older brother out beyond the kiddie boundary to the raft in the middle of the lake and back. I wasn’t as fast as Mark. But the races were exhilarating because racing gave me a new purpose to swim with focus and discipline to exert a little more energy than usual.
When the gymnastics competition came around, I focused on Olga Korbut’s routines on the uneven parallel bars and balance beam. Mesmerized by her fluid agility, I memorized each move she made. Then I tried to balance on a 3-inch-wide plank of the deck outside, jumping and spinning around as I walked its length. I was lucky that there were planks next to my “balance beam” as I usually needed a little more space to land. I wasn’t as flexible as Olga, but I admired her ability to somersault in the air and land on a narrow beam. Her smile after successful routines was infectious, but so were her tears after she fell or stumbled. Like other athletes, she gave all of herself to each routine. The consequences of this were visible to anyone who watched because we smiled when she smiled, and we were sad to see her sad.
The In-Between Time
There is both exhilaration and heartbreak in giving your all. And there is a lot of life—in fact most of life–in between either extreme, but where these athletes also give their all. It’s in that in-between time that athletes train, after all: in those routine and mundane days of carefully fixed diets, scheduled practice and training sessions, they prepare for the competition.
My own life isn’t anything like that of these elite athletes except perhaps that I too live most of my life in the mundane and routine times—days that may blend together in my memory, but which have their own structure and routines.
I lead a pretty scheduled life involving sleep, work, dog-walking, meals, and family time with a fair amount of prayer and meditation tucked in the midst of it all. I wish I could say I give my all each and every moment. But the truth of the matter is my attention can sometimes stray. I can be distracted by emotions or thoughts or expectations. If I were on a balance beam, I would surely falter and slip during times like this. I would certainly lose my edge in a race at times like this.
Perhaps in the only way I am like any of the elite athletes who compete at the Olympics, I can sometimes let circumstances overwhelm me or distract me from being present in the moment. But like I see so many athletes do, I’ve learned that I can regroup and find my way back to the present.
Sometimes it’s a brief closing of my eyes and a simple prayer. Other times it’s a simple mindful breath that brings me back to presence. I might shake out my arms much like swimmers to loosen up and let go of nervous energy. When I have the discipline to notice that I’ve become distracted, I can bring myself back to the present. And there is where real life happens: sometimes it’s exhilarating; sometimes its sad; often it’s mundane—but it’s always real life.
