A couple of random news stories struck a chord. 'Coach defends Aussie swimmers' for winning only one gold medal, and 'Business criticises Fair Work Review'. Both stories assumed that sport and business are for winners. Both were out of touch with the Australian community, which puts a higher value on learning to lose graciously.
Of course the Australian community sports many attitudes to the Olympic Games. Some, mainly sports journalists and children, see only gold and Australia's credit rising and falling with each medal won or lost. Some see only a waste of public money spent on promoting chauvinism. A larger number see a gathering of nice young people with large dreams, and wonder which ones they would like to bring home to meet their nephews and nieces.
When we see the Olympic Games in this last way we begin to understand what they are all about. We notice that there are many thousands of mainly young athletes from all around the world competing for a hundred or so medals. So we realise that the point of the exercise can't be to win. It is to lose. Or rather the Games are a school for learning how to lose, and so for becoming people that any family would like to invite home.
Athletes, children, journalists and nations all ideally learn by failure. Having failed they reflect on their response to failure, ask themselves what really matters, review their response in the light of what they see to be important. Then they come slowly to see themselves wryly as companions and fellow travelers of their fellow athletes and the rest of the human race, notwithstanding the fact that they have momentarily been competitors. They have then grown in humanity.
We journalists do not usually believe in schools, which are all about process. We suffer from attention deficit and so prefer events. But for those who have any eye for education there have been some very good examples of it in the London Games.
James Magnussen (pictured), who was hailed as a winner, had the media puffing him up and hanging off the hot air balloon they had created, became trapped by the inflated expectations put upon him, lost his first race, was devastated by his failure and responded accordingly.But as a second defeat followed the first, he became reflective, learned to lose graciously and accepted the solidarity offered him by Nathan Adrian, his victor.
Ordinary human beings