The 2024 Paris Olympics were an inspiration. Naturally, you might assume I’m going to write something about the inspiring physical and mental achievements of international athletes – that follows in a few minutes. Bear with me as I remark on what in our house was perceived as equally remarkable achievements by way of presentations on the part of the host city and country. They earned gold in professionalism.
I’ve not been to Paris and in all likelihood never will be. That says as much about my age and willingness to travel so far (physically and linguistically) as about my growing aversion to urban spaces in general. The longer I live the less patience I have for metropolises such as Paris, and likewise my linguistic self-patience and acuity.
The following aside says a lot about my ambivalence toward Paris. More than twenty years ago I was working toward my master’s degree in communication and culture. One of the courses I subscribed to was in the use of digital media, under the tutelage of my friend david green (lower case intentional). With david I practised how to better manipulate images and to use such digital applications. I used the city of Paris as a subject and created an animated street map of the city replacing much of its iconic architecture with a suitably sized image of the Eiffel Tower. The result was a touristic map of a dozen or more Eiffel Towers, perhaps the city’s most iconic visual presence.
That was a cheeky thing to do – disrespectful even – but serves to reinforce my less-than-respectful ambivalence toward that “city of love.” The city that loves itself.
No matter what impressions one might harbour for Paris and France, surely the way the Olympics were orchestrated and presented must have impressed. For the 2024 Paris summer and paralympic games, the city didn’t merely attempt to ride the coattails of its world-famous attractions – it actually used them as venues. Whether or not it’s my inattention to such things, I cannot say, but I do not recall any previous summer Olympics incorporating existing architecture to the same degree. Without belabouring the point, I mark that previous city-state hosts concentrated on using the Games to supplement local cultural and sports infrastructure with new multi-billion-dollar structures, whereas Paris used the Olympics to highlight its myriad cultural treasures.
Yes, the addition of temporary seating, staging, sand and security were necessary (a beach on the doorstep of Arc de Triomphe? Brilliant.) As international athletes flexed their muscles, Paris flexed its cultural muscle.
Wow. Just wow. Well done, Paris! Bravo, France (go Canada go).
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Delighted as we were with the Olympics and Paris, both were eclipsed by the Paralympics; a cannot adequately express how delightful they were. The superhuman athleticism of body, mind and spirit was surpassed only by the boundless energy, determination and joy exhibited by the para-athletes and their dedication to their respective endeavours. Their tears of pride, relief and even defiance were intoxicating. Bravo! I say.
Those performances led me to contemplate our performance as a wider society with respect to the various so-called infirmities of those athletes. Oddly enough – to my old eyes – groups of competitors often appeared to be physically mismatched. For lack of knowledge and imagination we couldn’t really get a handle on the seemingly disparate categories that “qualified” individual athletes for that particular physical discipline.
Clearly, each is “rated” in an inclusive way according to their “fitness” and “suitability” for that event. (Apologies if I’m misrepresenting or diminishing the exercise.) The categories are indecipherable to me (I’d like to learn more), but the simple fact remains that for each event people of different ability are encouraged and trained and coached to be the best they can be. To witness the smiles and tears of emotion of those people as they did their very best and pursued their respective goals was inspiring – and thought-provoking.
Obviously, the human and athletic potentials of each individual is identified and taken into account in an effort to make it possible for them to strive for the podium – and much more. I hope it is evident that it is not my intention to inadvertently diminish any individual achievement in this or any sphere. On the contrary, I hope it is clear that I celebrate each.
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With the Paralympics in mind, let us consider for the moment a bigger picture. Why can we not unlock (unleash?) the human potentials of each and every individual in wider society as have the parents, coaches and co-participants to get them to Paris? For I-don’t-know-how-long, society has concentrated its efforts on behalf of those who contribute to an apparently untenable version of potentiality by focusing on the material at the expense of – as I see it – true value.
Certainly, we invest scads of tax dollars on supposedly inclusive education, grudgingly it sometimes seems. Yet our world remains fraught with inequalities. I am the farthest thing from athletic. I don’t even like to watch team sports – except for the Olympics – but I very much appreciate and even applaud individuals in sports – or, rather, individual sports such as skiing and track-and-field, for instance.
It seems to me that over the course of my lifetime team sports have denigrated the notion of “sports.” While it is possible, even likely, that my aversion to team sports parallels my woeful lack of athleticism, the Paralympics brought me to reflect more sincerely on the societal benefits of sport-as-health. At the risk of alienating readers, I must emphasize that for me sports is not about the goal of competition (winning), but about physical and mental heath. Good health.
I can’t tell you how beneficial to my overall health it was to rediscover hiking, skiing and snowshoeing in my late fifties (a couple of decades ago), and just in time. The coordination of eyes, ears and muscles had the effect of improving my mental health too.
“Here’s to your health” – love, Plato.
Gosh, this rant is much longer than my usual. Stay with me, I do have a point.
Now and again, I find it helps to recall old ideas. Such reviews don’t stifle progress, whatever that is, or anything progressive, but they can remind us how important it is to consider other perspectives, even if thought to be out-of-date or out-of-touch. So, I’m going to once again recall Plato, and reflect on his thoughts about athletics and education (as I recall them).
In his Republic, Plato envisions that children’s education for the first dozen or so years of development should be in the form of play. What’s that? Play!? A pun on the name Plato perhaps? But education is serious business! It’s what prepares us for the real world out there, right? Education prepares us for earning a living and paying taxes, making babies and playing golf – for becoming “productive” members of society. That’s hardly playing.
In Plato’s estimation, play builds up a “store” of energy and, as a result, such good health will be strengthened in them that it will be the foundation of their lifelong health and citizenship.
By “play,” we learn, Plato meant primarily sports – running, jumping, energetic and joyful physicality. He did not – or so it’s been interpreted – I repeat, he did not mean mopping up the field of competition with your opponents’ innards and/or their dignity. He simply meant physical activity to get and keep the body strong. In this manner, a great “store” of health and energy will be developed in them that defines a healthy citizenry and nation for the longer term.
A ”store” of health. What does that mean? It doesn’t mean a retail store. Though sometimes you could be forgiven for interpreting it that way.
Over the span of my post-teenage years, I have asserted to anyone who listens – any captive audience – that it is a misnomer to refer to our health industry as anything but that: an industry. Maybe it should be framed as the illness industry, or illness care, but currently it does not seem to be about our health at all. It’s about repair. Maybe that’s what we should call it: health repair. Hmm, that doesn’t work either, for while we can repair broken bones, we cannot necessarily repair broken health, especially if there was a lack of health in the first place. If we can be physically healthy and resilient lifelong, we wouldn’t clog up the waiting rooms in search of new prescriptions.
People might counter that we ought not to and cannot fault people for shortcomings in their own health. That’s partly true, of course, provided they have been encouraged and coached and helped to be healthy in the first place. And we’re not going to reverse things overnight. School programs are not going to churn out legions of ballerinas, hockey stars or modern-day Picassos in every generation – though recollecting some artworks in grade-school exhibits that I’ve previously written about, maybe every child is a budding Picasso.
I suppose that Plato might have had more support for his vision if he had mentioned that healthy (sporting) youngsters also grow to be healthy soldiers. If he’d made his essay about healthy armies to be mobilized by potentates, he may have been heeded. But that’s another think.
If we can believe our history lessons, Plato’s preferred tutorials were small groups of healthy young minds sitting around him in olive groves. I often wonder about those classes and about that learning environment, conveniently located as they were in a warm climate that enabled people to gather out-of-doors. Enclosed buildings of the day were better used as family domiciles, whereas larger venues like coliseums were for larger sporting events, such as chariot races and executions. Of course, philosophical ministering can get you in a lot of hot water and things do not always end well for them. At least such sentences were commuted quickly, and not by a lingering death in an overcrowded hospital ward.
Erecting school buildings to house classes and to finance those buildings here in frosty northern climes, you need to find efficiencies. Such efficiencies include, of course, overheads like heat, lights and teachers, so we cram 30+ youngsters into a climate-controlled room under the tutelage of a teacher who makes the best of that situation and who rises to the challenge of perpetuating the modern continuum of learning (and thus of earning).
In future rant, maybe I’ll pen something about class sizes, and cursive writing and second languages. But I digress. Stay tuned.
Will we never learn (pun intended)? Coliseums and classrooms do have similarities, but I wish to address the latter from a slightly different perspective. What coliseums and classrooms have in common is competition, but not necessarily healthy competition which comes in the form of physical play.
“Play” can of course include competition. Through competition people strive to extend their bodily boundaries in pursuit of new levels of endeavour. The Olympics and Paralympics demonstrated for me that we can compete, strive for excellence, even win a race, all in celebration of the personal achievements of competitors.
It’s true that many podium achievers wrap themselves in their national flag in an apparent display of national pride, but I perceive this parade as a nod to their sponsors.
On the field of play, competition can also be framed in the spirit of healthy physical activity, which in itself is a form of learning, learning by the body. We seem to engage competitively with each other off the field as well – in the classroom, for example. In some circles, the field of play is a joyful place where physical exertion and friendly competition are their own rewards. In a classroom of thirty pupils of varied abilities, competition can be as debilitating as it is exhilarating.
In a classroom of 30-plus competitors there is no way that every learning style, no way that interests and abilities can be effectively coached to fulfillment. Add in homeroom hormones and … need I say more?
So, what should the Paralympics teach us (aside from humility)? For one thing, they teach us that alternative styles of playing and learning and just plain interacting can be applied to everyone. They teach us that everyone has value, has gifts that can be nurtured and unleashed to personal success – to be healthy and happy human beings who celebrate the personal successes of all.
=30=
