Being Fully Present

It’s February 1st.  Can you believe it?

Lots of great days are observed in February; Groundhog Day, the Super Bowl, Valentine’s Day, Washington’s birthday, Lincoln’s birthday, and Ash Wednesday.  This year, we also celebrate a special event that only comes along every four years, the Winter Olympics.

The Olympic Torch Relay is getting closer and closer to Vancouver.  The Olympic flame will be lit on February 12, signaling the start of the greatest international competition in sports.  Following the final event, the men’s gold medal hockey game, the closing ceremonies will culminate with the flame being extinguished on February 28. 

The sixteen days of the Olympics will be filled with much more than competition and medals.  I l0ve the background stories that are told about the athletes.  Getting to know the athletes a little bit, hearing about their personal triumphs and struggles on the road to Vancouver, hearing what motivates them, is all quite fascinating to me.

I admit, I suffer from Olympic addiction.  Or, I enjoy Olympic addiction and my husband suffers from it!  I tend to watch every moment I can which makes him a little crazy. I’ll also be writing about it; there will be several posts inspired by Olympic stories, I’m sure.

My favorite Winter Olympic events include short track speed skating, ski jumping, luge, men’s ice hockey, alpine skiing and figure skating.  Speed, grace, individual excellence, team effort.  I haven’t quite figured out curling, but I enjoy watching it, too! (Wouldn’t it be great to be a sweeper?)

Other than ice skating on Watching Lake, NJ with my parents when I was a kid, I never participated in any winter sports.  But, I always feel a little closer to my German heritage while watching them.  Although my parents always cheered for the American athletes, their nationality was evident during the Olympics.  Now that my Dad is no longer living and Mom no longer has her mental faculties, I feel that I need to step up and cheer on the German athletes on their behalf.

I’ll be cheering U-S-A, U-S-A as enthusiastically and patriotically as anyone, and hope our athletes bring home the gold – lots of gold!  But, I’ll also be cheering for the German atheletes to compete well and win – the silver!

PS: On Twitter, follow 2010Tweets for timely updates from the Vancouver Olympics.  On Facebook, become a fan of Vancouver 2010 Olympics. 

Images used in accordance with Vancouver Olympic Media guidelines.

This entry was posted on February 1, 2010 at 4:00 am and is filed under Entertainment, Random, Sports. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Culture, Goals, Life, Olympics, Peace, Possibilities, Sports