Fragile?

The Olympics are done for another four years. I prefer the winter over the summer, probably because I spent the entire 2002 winter games on the couch with a back injury. This afforded me the opportunity to acquaint myself with the intricacies of speed skating and snowboarding, as well as the stuff I grew up watching on Wide World of Sports—alpine skiing, figure skating and the like.

The games in Pyeong Chang were riddled with the usual assortment of political scandal, heartbreak, and upsets (some happy, some not). They also featured swan songs for a number of athletes who have been staples in competition for years, and showcased the next generation of champions who will follow them. Ter and I watched the hockey (no gold medal game should be settled by a shootout) and the figure skating, the latter being a favourite because of the artistry as well as the technical skill. Truly, I can’t tell a salchow from an axel or a lutz, never mind counting the number of rotations in midair, but the beauty of the human form in flight rivals that of a horse at full gallop.

Our compostable containers are miraculous works of engineering. The things they can do on an Olympic scale are astonishing. Strength, agility, flexibility, speed, endurance ... in every competition, I saw something amazing. The slow motion replays only accentuated the marvel that is the human body.

At the same time, it doesn’t take much to knock us out of whack. A twist in the wrong direction will tear a tendon. A sneeze will cause a muscle spasm to seize us in our tracks. A hard fall will break a bone. A hard hit will scramble a brain. A crash in training will sideline an athlete for years and maybe kill their dream of Olympic gold. That’s how fragile our flesh and blood forms are.

Then there’s Mark McMorris, who recovered from a broken pelvis to compete in the snowboard event this year. The British pairs skater who shattered a kneecap and came back to skate in Pyeong Chang. The hockey player who broke his neck a year ago and won bronze for Canada. I can’t even name the others, and there were more than a few. They came from all nations with the same story: debilitating injury and a refusal to concede. So while the human body may be fragile, it seems the human spirit is far from it.

And that’s not only true for Olympians. It’s true of every soul inhabiting the planet. The indomitable power in each of us can rise to the most daunting challenge. The nature of this mortal coil means we can’t overcome everything, which presents a challenge of a different sort: the challenge of acceptance, which can be as difficult as fighting back from injury. Knowing when to stop may be the toughest hurdle of all.

Us? Fragile? Nah.