The Olympics, Is Anyone Watching?

I am sure that there are a lot of people watching the summer Olympics as they take place in London, however, I am not one of them.  I don't know what it is about the summer Olympics, I just never really took to watching them.  Perhaps it is because they take place during the time of year when I am busiest and would much rather be spending time outside than indoors glued to my TV watching people do flips through the air or round around a track in circles.  Don't get me wrong, I like the Olympics, it just so happens that by the time I get some time to watch them, they are over and I have forgotten to record anything.  That brings about another issue, recording them.  How does one possibly figure out what to record from the Olympics if they plan on watching them?  There are so many events taking place that I guess it boils down to picking out which sport you would most want to see and recording those.  And despite the fact that I am writing about the Olympics while they are taking place, I still will probably not record anything or watch anything.  For me, the winter Olympics are more my style.  Perhaps it is the fact that there is more danger involved in the winter games and more chance of disaster that grabs my attention and keeps me watching.  Or it could simply be the fact that I have more time on my hands in the winter, it gets dark out early, and it is much colder and not really conducive to spending relaxing evenings outdoors.  Regardless about which games you or I like better, every two years we get a chance to bring cultures together and bask in some relative calm as we watch athletes compete from around the world. 

Seeing the success of the games and how they manage to bring people together, perhaps we could begin a new era for athletes outside the Olympic games.  Perhaps instead of fighting wars and killing each other, we could simply pick out top athletes and have them compete against each other to resolve world wide conflicts.  Imagine how many fewer lives would have been lost if we decided to have athletes compete to decide the Iraq conflict instead of sending in troops.   I know, there are so many minor details that would get in the way of this actually being a form of conflict resolution, but its nice to dream sometimes.  Imagine if there was a boxing match to decide if Sadaam Hussein should have remained in power or not.  One match, that's all.  If Iraq won, Sadaam would have been allowed to remain, if they lost, Sadaam leaves, simple as that.  Obviously the biggest problem would have been getting Sadaam to agree to such a deal, but it could have save hundreds if not thousands of lives if it could have worked.  But alas, I sometimes live in a dream world where reality has no hold and as such come up with these crazy ideas like having athletes compete to resolve world conflicts.  I will keep on dreaming, however, because I still feel it would be much more humane to have a competition versus a war.  But for now, let us simply revel in the relative peace and calm that is the summer Olympic games.  There is obviously the competitive spirit, but it does not bring about violence for the most part and while people are there to win, it is also a damn good time. 

The Olympics seem to be one of the last vestiges which can bring the world together in such a peaceful way.  There is not much else that the world can gather behind outside the Olympics that is as universal.  There is the World Cup of soccer, but there are countries who just don't compete or have very little interest in it.  There is the Super Bowl in the United States, but that is solely an American tradition and not one shared by any other country.  There are other random sporting events, but nothing quite compares to the universality of the Olympic games.  As long as the Olympic games are played, there is a chance for peace in this world I believe.  If we can manage to put all issues aside for a few weeks every four years (two if you include the winter Olympics), then there is hope at resolving issue for longer periods of time.  I fear that some issue will never get resolved, but at least we have the peace of the Olympic games.  While I did not watch the opening ceremony this time around for the summer Olympics, I have watched it in the past and almost every time it moves me to see such a diverse crowd gathered together to celebrate athletic prowess.  While the games aren't the most important thing in the world, they do offer a welcome diversion from the crap that we deal with the rest of the time.  So for these few weeks (despite the fact that I was talking politics the past few days), let us enjoy some athletic competition and forget about the world's worries for a while.