The Paralympics and Super Humans

During the Olympics, our screens were filled with sportsmen and women pushing their bodies to the limit, and achieving amazing feats of speed, distance and endurance. Perhaps more amazing still are the athletes now gathering to participate in the Paralympic games, who don’t let “disability” or "different ability" to stand in the way of their sporting achievements.

For most of the athletes, their results are a mixture of determination, training, sheer hard work and raw talent honed through years of commitment. It is an inspiration! The pressure consistently placed on them for years for one brief moment, it must be incredibly tempting to use any advantage to give your chances a boost.

Inevitably and sadly, the potential benefits of winning a medal, and that desire for personal and national glory, mean that some may be tempted to resort to non-legitimate ways of gaining advantage over their rivals- performance enhancing drugs, for example. The news during the Tour De France and the Olympics was spattered with accusations (and occasional incidents) of abuse and it tarnished some of the excitement and enthusiasm. It made me sorry for the athletes who work so hard for so long, who give their all to a sport and play fair. It also made me reflect on the pressure we all feel to be "perfect" and the lengths we are tempted to go sometimes to chase that elusive ideal.

Many of us have benefitted from medical technologies which have benefitted our quality of life-  whether that be hip replacements, heart pacemakers or just reading glasses. I'm a diabetic and wear an insulin pump - it has radically enhanced my everyday life, and I am grateful to the science that makes it and things like it possible.

Most of these technologies are currently used in a medical context, to restore us to a normal, healthy state.  However, some people (particularly within the military) would like advocate going a stage further- to begin use technology to give humans abilities which we don’t currently have: for example, infra- red vision, which would allow us to “see in the dark”.

How far down the road of building “better” humans should we contemplate going using technology and medical science? Of course, just being fastest or strongest doesn’t necessarily make us better people. In fact, paradoxically, it is often through our most difficult struggles that we find a deeper strength of character and the presence of God in others who support and sustain us.  Complexity is part of being human and oftentimes what we perceive we as "strength" and "weakness".

Are we beginning to subscribe to an ideology that says " there is one brand of beautiful and we can all be sculpted into shape?" Like the athletes who find that the extraordinary pressure to win leads them to compromise who they are and what they stand for, are we aware of the pressure we place on each other to conform to a model, no matter the cost?  Hopefully the Paralympic athletes will be an example and inspiration to us all, in that pushing ourselves to be the best that we can be is part of what makes us human, but what also makes us human is our beautiful diversity.

Let that be an achievement worth celebrating!

The Medals Race vs the Human Race

We've made it through the Olympics.

I don't know about you, but I've been a bit bleary-eyed in the mornings because the only time I can catch up is right at the end of play, and once you start watching, it gets a wee bit addictive! The Opening Ceremony was particularly spectacular - it struck the perfect note, being just eccentric enough to be thoroughly British; yet open, and embracing the core purpose of the Games: the coming together of Nations.

I found myself wishing we could hang on a little harder to that core principle.  I must admit to getting weary listening to commentators going on and on about the "medals' race" - and I wonder what would happen if we put everybody in a "Global" kit and let them compete, not for the pride of one country but simply and completely for the joy of a world-wide community. What a celebration!

How we measure greatness

Like many folk I have been caught up in the excitement of the Olympics. So much raw talent and humbling dedication goes onto the making of these athletes, the chance for victory and the risk of failure are so closely knitted that the courage of competing is itself simply breathtaking. As a nation, I hope we keep the focus on the human achievement that simply being in the Olympics represents and we don't succumb to the temptation of measuring success in medals and broken records.   

In the global arena, my hope is similar: that we measure greatness not in glory, strength, medal tallies or power, but by looking at giving, selflessness and acts of love.

Which is why I was so impressed by the Scottish Government's announcement that every school in Scotland will be sent a copy of the film 'Chariots of Fire'. This oscar-award winning movie charts the life of one of Scotland's greatest Olympians - Eric Liddell. He won gold in the 400m at the 1924 Games but is remembered because be refused to run his favoured event because it was on a Sunday. I must admit that I had trouble getting my head around that decision, but after reading more about his life, I realised that his decision about that race was based on a life-long commitment to a certain way of living - not through the routine following of religiosity but by living his faith in a way which still inspires us today.  Perhaps the greatest act of this courageous man was his final decision to give up his chance to leave an horrendous prisoner of war camp, instead giving up his place to a pregnant woman. 

C. S. Lewis once wrote: "People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, 'If you keep a lot of rules I'll reward you, and if you don't I'll do the other thing.' I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different from what it was before. And taking your life as a whole, with all your innumerable choices, all your life long you are slowly turning this central thing either into a heavenly creature or into a hellish creature."

The message of the Olympic Games is that the most important thing is not to win, but to take part with all your being. If we all play our part in the world like that, then we show each other what it means to be great.