Pack Creek Ranch, San Juan County, Utah
Peak fire season continues – hot, dry, windy, and smoky. Thunderstorms with lightning are predicted.
GAMES
GAMES – random thoughts and memories:
Once again, I didn’t qualify for the Olympic games.
Scratch that off my lifetime bucket list.
I won’t qualify for the Paralympic Games, either. (They begin in Paris on August 28th, by the way.)
But once upon a time, I was on the starting line in Olympia.
Traveling with friends, we visited the site of the original games and ran up the tunnel into the ruins of the stadium. Two of us knelt at the location where the runners had knelt at least since 726 B.C. Ready, set . . . but we paused. Our tour guide explained that if we wanted to run as contestants once were, we had to be naked.
Right. Forget that.
Clothed, we did run a little way out into the ancient stadium.
Who won? We both did – just by being there together. I suspect that attitude is at the heart of the worldwide human activity of play. Friendly competition – for fun. Usually not to determine winners or losers, but to continue the spirit of play.
One:
Initiation into the manly game of poker happened to me on a camping trip when I was a Cub Scout. Our troop leader, a senior Explorer Scout, offered to teach us to play. Lacking proper poker chips, we used Oreo cookies and Hershey’s Kisses. Our leader cheated. And laughed when he took all our cookies and candy. Lesson learned. He won the game but lost our trust and respect. We never played with him again.
Two:
Though I’ve played poker for 80 years now, the purpose of the best games was to be together with boon companions and send everyone home wanting to do it again – winners all.
Three:
One of the competitions at the Olympics that fascinates me is javelin throwing. It’s an ancient art – probably not a big commercial future of fame and fortune at stake. Throwing a spear is a fairly obscure activity. But I bet that the world of the javelin is a tight community and they compete as much for the sake of that sense of companionship as for any medals.
The same is true for discus, shot put, fencing, and archery.
Four:
If you follow track and field competitions, as I do, you will notice those participants who are fated to always finish way back in the field. They devote their lives and training to taking part, well knowing that they will never win gold or set records. They are there for the love of the sport and for the companionship of those who share that love – those who understand the yearning to be the best they can be.
Finally:
The photo that accompanies this journal posting may seem strange to you. But if you are Czech, you know who that faceless figure is – Jara Cimrman. That little ceramic statue occupies a place of honor on my desk. Why? When a survey of Europeans asked the name of the most important and famous persons in their countries, the Czechs named Jara Cimrman.
But he never really existed.
Except in the creative imaginations of the Czechs.
His fame lay in the fact that he was always back in the pack.
Third man to reach the North Pole, for example – and the late inventor of important scientific discoveries, not the first. (To read the whole story, check out Cimrman on Wikipedia)
Most of all, Jara represents an attitude essential to the citizens of a small central European country who have always prevailed with hard work and a light heart.
When I speak in public to a Czech audience, I often begin by saying that I am an illegitimate American great-grandson of Jara Cimrman. And then they know who I am.
But that’s a story for another time.
That’s the sum of the human enterprise – to keep it going, to find your place, and take part in the companionship.
To do serious work with a light heart.
That’s what it means to win the game.