Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang there except those that sang best. ~ Henry Van Dyke
We remember…
That’s what we’ll be saying – like Sept. 11, 2001 or Nov. 22, 1963 or Jan.6, 2021– as we recall this February 2022 inflection (or reflection) point in our history. We’ll remember how we were looking for glimpses of light and hope in the midst of winter and the days following the Olympic games.
We struggle through Covid-19, now into the third year. We’re still dealing with political divisions in our own country (all unnecessary, and absurd, to my mind). We gratefully take a collective respite during the Olympics. But as the Beijing Winter 2022 Olympics close, the torch goes dark, the snowflakes melt, the lanterns dim, and the children’s choir stops singing. Right on schedule…Russia goes ballistic against Ukraine.
I’ve lived through many decades, on the cusp of my eightieth. – never expecting in the modern technical world that we’d be living through such tumultuous times. I thought technology would bring us together, not push us apart. It’s ironic to know that very technology can also help sew division and strife.
I was such an idealist in the 1960s. I naively thought that the world would keep progressing. After all, we went to the moon. After the Kennedy assassination, the Vietnam War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, it seemed the people of the world could finally come together. My early impression of the Orwellian vision of 1984 receded in my mindset. The Olympic dream seemed a possibility. Then came Sept. 11 and the aftermath. More wars, more division. The moon seemed far, far away again.
We elect politicians who further division. We flirt with strong men and oligarchy…exactly what we thought we left in 1776. In recent times, the specter of 1984 rises in the back of our consciousness. Artists and writers create plays books and films to help shine a light on what’s happening. Covid-19 clouds our vision. It’s hard to see clearly. Our lives are in a fog. But, throughout, we write, we create, and we think a lot.
This Covid-19 time is proving to be a transitional time. Not only have we separated into more division, we’re weary of masking and constant changes in protocols to deal with the pandemic. Protocols keep changing. Doctors, patients, and all health care workers confront the limits of frustration levels. Numbers plunge, as winter winds down. But, when will we really be done with Covid and its after-effects?
Even, pre-Covid, for the past several years, life has felt like never-never land. The upside down. Whatever you wish to call it. It’s a strange time, when everything does seem backwards, upside down, and not at all normal. So how do you navigate the not normal? How do you stay positive, when the world – as my grandma used to say – seems to be going to hell in a hand basket? Of course, she also used say, It’ll all come out in the wash. I hope we can.
It’s been a strange time-out. This Covid time and all the division has drained us mentally. As for me, I feel that I’ve crossed over in to new territory, into some new phase. My networks are gone. Where, I don’t know. Why, I don’t know. Maybe because of Covid? Because of political division? What I do know, is that I’m starting over. I’m imagining that many people are, as well.
So what does starting over mean in 2022? What will it be like, crossing a bridge into a new landscape?
Besides crossing over bridges, hopefully we may each be a bridge. I recall after Sept. 11, 2001 writing about Simon and Garfunkle’s pop American 1970 folk song: Bridge over Troubled Water. How many times have we listened to it in troubled times? I wrote about it in 2002 after Sept. 11. I reminisced again in 2012. Over Troubled Water: Still building bridges 10 years later.
May each of us be the bridge we seek over troubled water. One by one, we can make a difference in our corner of the world. The ripple effect builds into a tsunami; and together the waves create a cleansing and renewing global shift, where peaceful waters flow beneath those bridges that we’ve built.
My goodness, what I wrote then seems prescient:
On Sept. 11, 2001, there was a call for unity and love to prevail. There was a collective will to transcend the divisions. Why, then, does our world seem even more volatile in 2012? Why is everything either black and white or red and blue? Why this polarity in our culture? Haven’t we been there, done that? When, for heaven’s sake, will we take the quantum leap?
Reading what I wrote ten years ago, you can see my idealism trying to hang on, even in 2002. Twenty years later, I wonder. I sound like a broken record: Like a bridge over troubled water.
Chinese Olympic gold medalists Sui Wenjing and Han Cong ice danced to that music in Beijing. Naturally, it reverberated again in my heart, sending me back to my own bridge over troubled water. How amazing that they selected that music. How amazing the performance. So fitting for today – February 2022. I wondered why they selected it for their stunning performance.
As the ceremonies opened, I marveled at the snowflake theme and the doves: A dove heart around a snow flake. One day during the Olympics I saw two doves in a tree outside my window in a snowstorm. A peaceful scene. They remained there on the branch, silently, for a long time. Mesmerizing.
Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee, remarked in his closing speech about giving peace a chance. He said to the athletes:
You not only respected each other. You supported each other. You embraced each other, even if your countries are divided by conflict.
You overcame these divisions, demonstrating that in this Olympic community we are all equal. We are all equal – regardless of what we look like, where we come from, or what we believe in.
This unifying power of the Olympic Games is stronger than the forces that want to divide us: you give peace a chance.
May the political leaders around the world be inspired by your example of solidarity and peace.
Bach called out to all political authorities: Give peace a chance. He spoke about fierce rivals living peacefully and respectfully together as peaceful competitors.
He talked about building bridges, never erecting walls. He stressed being united in diversity, promoting human understanding through the Olympic ideal.
The Olympic theme is to go faster, aim high, become stronger…together. The call to Olympic athletes is to inspire the world. Why can’t we do this in 2022?
In today’s world, boundaries are disappearing. Perhaps that is at the heart of the issue.
So here we are, in the Chinese Year of the Tiger. Ambition and struggle abound. Yet so do courage and strength. Is there hope? I like to think so, when the Beijing ceremonies included John Lennon’s music Imagine all the People. Faster, higher, stronger. And the world will be as one.
In our fragile world, what might it look like if we all respect each other and be as one?
On the bridge over troubled water, perhaps love is the answer. This year, I snail mailed a number of Valentine’s Day cards. I ordered some stamps, asking on the envelope, “Do you have any love stamps?
My stamps came back with the answer from my post person. She wrote out with a smiley face: We have lots of LOVE!
The love theme sprinkled through the snowflakes, doves, and lanterns at the Olympics…along with the Chinese knot symbolizing togetherness. You could feel the love. And always, the kaleidoscope of flags from myriad countries, swirling in a vast panoply of color.
The theme looking forward to Milano, Cortina at the 2926 winter games in Italy is: Duality Together, the balance between man and nature, the unifying power of the Olympic story. Respecting, embracing, supporting each other is the Olympic ideal, which we like to think of as the American ideal. Or so I was brought up to believe.
As the children’s choir sang at the closing in Beijing, with glowing, smiling faces, I couldn’t help but wonder, “What will be their world?” Where will we be in 2026?
We are one world, one family ,the Olympics remind us. Somehow, my wish is that we, as individuals across the planet, make our own light…reminiscent perhaps of the “thousand points of light” we heard from a political theme long ago.
Yes, somehow, my wish at this inflection moment in 2022 is that we may each hold up a lantern above the bridge over these troubled waters. May we be like the bird that sings, no matter what the circumstances, to the tune of peace, hope, and love. And may the moon still be visible across that bridge.
