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keeping up with the consumer…

This week I was walking through the flagship Sears store on Robson street and it was kind of depressing.  I had noticed a while ago the “going out of business” signs.  I thought it was just that location but I gather Sears is in trouble.

It does seem to have lost its way.  I guess it’s likely run by a bunch of old, white guys… let me check… no pics on the investors web page – but those names are not ethnic!  And nary a girl name among them.  So I bet they didn’t see H&M and Zara coming to eat their lunch… and they didn’t realize maybe they should take a page out of Target’s book and learn how to be a bit cooler…

My current shoe collection would suggest otherwise but almost my entire childhood wardrobe came from Sears – unless my mom sewed it herself.  The kids nowadays have no idea how much the world has changed in their favour.  And it has benefited a lot of people.

It is really cheap to be a fashionista in the 21st century.  And that is a wonderful thing.  I look back at pictures of me from the 70s and I just cringe.  But I didn’t know any better 🙂  There was no MTV, let alone fashion bloggers and websites posting photos of the latest designer collections a few hours after they hit the runway.

We may not have achieved as much political democracy as we might have hoped for but we have democratized fashion in a way that can only be a force for good for the human race.

Sure, fashion is silly.  And one shouldn’t get too caught up in it.  But fashion is also political.  Just ask a woman wearing a burqa in 40 degree Celsius heat.

Fashion is especially political for women.  And the politics take many forms.  My first job was on Bay Street (the Canadian equivalent of Wall Street).  It was a big deal.  I came from a small town on the Canadian prairie and Toronto was the big smoke.  And Bay Street.  It was the culmination of so many of the things my dad had taught me.

Including how to be a rebel 😉  Only recently I would go to clients and see the exposed thongs of the young female staff members (really a don’t, ladies! 🙂  But back in the 80s there were very few women in business and the tiny minority had decided that dressing like the boys would be the key to their ascent up the ladder.  The more conservative the profession, the tougher the rules.

At least we didn’t have to worry our costume would obscure our peripheral vision but it was pretty strict.  Only dull colours, no pants, hosiery non-optional, sensible pumps preferred and – the worst part – a floppy bow scarf thing around your neck in place of a necktie.

In those days in my private time I dressed like a pseudo-punk so, needless to say, the dress code (and many companies had written ones back then) made me crazy.  So I wore pants.  I was the only woman who did.  What was most amusing was that when I pointed that out to male colleagues they were surprised.  Only the women cared – and noticed.  I think the guys just looked at your ass – and if it was good, what you covered it with didn’t matter very much…  I also wore boy’s neckties in place of the cursed floppy bow… if we were supposed to dress  like boys, why not do it right?  I think it was sexier.  I got a lot of compliments from guys on my ties 🙂  And – a harbinger of my future identity – I wore shoes as funky as I thought I could get away with.

And – in my first performance review – the female partner I reported to (who dressed like a butch lesbian) called me out on my dress.  She told me I dressed “too mod”.  I think I wasn’t too cheeky but unfortunately she gave me a story for life… “too mod”… what is “too mod”???  I’m still not really sure.  I think she was just saying I had a personality and the style sense to express it.  And the firm did not approve. 

I always cheer a little when I see some cool shoes poking out under a burqua 😉  Maybe if Sears had some cross-dressers on its board, its business would be better.  Fashion may be frivolous but it has also always been political.  It has been a reflection of the times, of the social mores and of the religious state of all the nations that comprise the world.

And the world is changing, people.  It’s not all good.  It never is.  But there is definitely some good things happening out there.  And fashion is a mirror to what’s going on.  So what’s it telling us…

Fashion is being produced where the labour rates are lowest.  Bad for developed countries but great for developing ones.  It’s forcing people to acquire actual skills the marketplace wants in order to get a paycheque.  It’s supplying paycheques to lots of people (especially women) in lots of countries where that was not a possibility even twenty years ago.

It’s made clothes cheap.  So everyone can express themselves.  And look good.  And acquire the self-esteem that comes from that.

It’s opened up new markets and made it not such a big deal to have an Asian or African model sell clothes to white people.  And – more importantly – to be a mirror for their own people so that they can visualize themselves in the clothes.

I feel some nostalgia walking through the now almost empty Sears store.  It used to be the flagship Eatons store before they also forgot about the consumer.  I bought almost everything at that Eatons store.  And it was one of my first audits so I counted inventory there so many times I could direct people to departments better than almost any of the staff members 🙂

When I was a child my dad was always buying properties and we would be going through old abandoned houses cleaning up.  One of my strongest memories was the old catalogues from Eatons and Sears.  That was how people bought things on the Canadian prairie back in the early days of the twentieth century.

That’s the thing with consumers.  They always think they are moving forward and what they are doing has never been done before.  But the internet is the new Sears catalogue.  Nowadays people all over the world buy things in the same way a 20th century farmer without access to a shopping mall would.  Sears coulda been Amazon… if only they hadn’t been asleep at the wheel…

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artsy stuff, social commentary

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more jobs… fewer snakes…

I was too sleepy to write this post last night while I was watching Jon Stewart skewer politicians but this was one of his memorable quotes.

If the context seems a little hard to grasp, well, that is part of the message.  The reference was to the vague quality of the Republican candidates plans for the economy and the future of the country.

The statement above refers to Mitt Romney’s plea for more jobs.  Since he hasn’t the supplied the details as to how he plans to get those jobs, Jon quipped that the Republican platform reads like a letter to Santa Claus.  Most people would also ask Santa for fewer snakes…

While making fun of Republicans is a form of sport for Jon (like shooting guns at moving targets is for Republican NRA members), the digs at Mitt’s lack of details on how to create those jobs was juxtaposed with a Bill Clinton talkin’ about arithmetic.

Nothing warms my heart more than a man who says “do the math.”   I think that’s why I am always falling for brainiac engineers 🙂

I realize most people hate math.  I love math.  But I also love logic.  And facts.  And apparently I like Bill Clinton a lot more than I realized 🙂

I was working every minute or living overseas when Clinton was President so I really didn’t know enough about what he was doing to have an opinion.  But his moral compass seemed a bit questionable and I had just assumed he was swarmy and unimpressive.

But I gotta say I was impressed!  Bill’s charm is totally lost on me.  He’s the dude I would leave sitting at the bar after I had excused myself to the bathroom and then snuck out when he wasn’t looking…  But he is smart!  And one of the best politicians in modern history.

Bill actually talked facts!  He quoted numbers.  He made the Republicans look like ill-informed jerks.  And I am pretty neutral.  I don’t get to vote for the President.  And I think the United States of America would be a far better country if they knew how to count in Florida and Gore had put  Bush into the place in history he really deserved.

Being part of the nerdy minority who thinks intelligence, honour and compassion are the critical elements to a civilization and the tenets to which every citizen should strive, it is painful to watch the Fox News clips on The Daily Show.  I really should have brought that up with Rupert when we were in the same elevator… but he hadn’t created that atrocity yet…

What is more sexy than a smart guy with a big vocabulary – who actually knows how to use those words properly in a sentence? 😉  God bless Jon Stewart.  He gives me faith that there is still intelligent life in the USA.  I fall in love with him a little more all the time.  Don’t tell his wife 😉  But watch him!  Shockingly, you will actually learn stuff.  And he will make it fun.  That’s why he has all those Emmys 🙂

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life philosophy, shining examples, social commentary

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money makes the world go round

Money gets a really bad rap.  The root of all evil?  I thought that was overly religious Republicans… or the crazy Muslims who thinks Jihad is a good idea.  There is no shortage of crazy, evil ideas – and people with access to guns or explosives – in the 21st century.  So money – be it in the form of cold, hard paper currency or even colder and harder gold – seems benign by comparison.

And money has done at least as much good for the world as modern medicine or the enlightenment.  So says Niall Ferguson in “The Ascent of Money”.  Nothing makes my heart beat faster than a smart guy who combines great articulation with a reverence for facts.  Both sadly too easily fluffed over in the 21st century where anything over 200 characters is deemed too hard.  What happened to the idea that we have BIG brains, not small ones?

And those who exercise their brains in the same way Olympic athletes with great abs do will appreciate that money is not inherently evil.  It really is the stuff that makes the world go round and is a greater force for potential good than almost anything else.

But it is also the currency of the Antichrist… so you gotta think about how you are accumulating and spending those dollars, whatever their format.

I am a big proponent of the concept of money as a force for good.  And even more important than money is markets.  And jobs.  But none of them exist without money.

Money.  Risk.  Markets.  They drive our daily life.  But most people yawn when they hear any of those words.  People in the developed world yawn.  But people in the developing  world may not be able to articulate the words, especially in English, but they have a much more personal feeling about what they mean.

One of the travel experiences I know I will never forget happened last year in the Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania.  It is one of the most spectacular geological formations on earth and chock-a-block with the closest thing to tame wild animals.  You still shouldn’t pet the lions – but the animals will mostly not run away.

Just being there would have been enough but since I was travelling alone I had spent the previous evening having dinner with our ranger Alex so we were chatting when we stopped for lunch amid all the other tourist vehicles.  He had been reconnecting with friends and it was a familiar scene in an unusual setting.  Because we had become more friends than ranger/tourist by that point, he introduced me to his friends and noted how happy everyone was and how fun it was to catch up… because they had jobs.

There has been lots of talk about unemployment in the developed world over the past few years – and I have been there so I know how it feels.  But unemployment when you have been born into the privileged part of the world and unemployment when you have been born into a part of the world where having a good job is like winning the lottery are totally different things.

When I was in Tanzania, I travelled with &Beyond and I would encourage everyone to do a trip with them.  I have never encountered an organization that gave capitalism such a great name.  They make a profit.  They are well organized.  Their employees love them.  They give back to the community via a foundation that does everything right.

http://www.andbeyond.com/

Money is not evil.  Only people are.  So use your money to make the world a better place.  Think when you spend.  Help to create markets that make the world a better place.  Read Niall’s book.  He is a fantastic writer.  The book is subtitled “A Financial History of the World.” 

A bit ambitious?  Without question.  The message that I took away was how important finance has been to human development.  Just ask a gorilla to break a twenty dollar bill 🙂   But what I think we all need to embrace is how we as individuals can create jobs, markets and world prosperity every time we leave the house – or go on-line to buy something.

Money can make the world a better place.  Finance matters.  Money can be evil.  Money can buy guns, slaves and votes.  But money can be used for microfinance loans, for medicine and for education.  In the developed world we are all rich people by world standards – what kind of rich person do you want to be?  Let your spending reflect your conscience.

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life philosophy, social commentary

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my dark days with Ayn Rand ;)

I am working my ass off right now.  Ayn Rand would be proud 🙂   And, yes Republicans, I built it!  Really truly.  Not the infrastructure, including the highly subsidized education that got me here, you morons, but I am FAR more impressive than Mitt or Paul… of course that great education I got was mostly courtesy of the phenomenal world changing conception invented by the Scots I believe of making free public education available to the masses.

And the scrappy side of my family who taught me to question everything.  I should be in bed but Jon Stewart is at the Republican convention and he has rarely been more brilliant.  My brain is on fire from watching television.  Who would have thunk it?

How I am back thinking about Ayn Rand.  It’s been decades…  I am not sure if you know about Ayn Rand.  She was a crazy Russian novelist who had been through the Russian Revolution as part of the displaced bourgeois.  Seems fair she ended up an atheist elitist who hated government.

I have always been a voracious reader, one of those strange people who stressed out at a young age when they realized they would NOT be able to read ALL the books in the library!  So instead I had to try and figure out what I should be reading.  I asked my twelfth grade English teacher for a list of books to read.  And she was the one who told me to read Ayn Rand.

Being young, impressionable and fairly conservative, Objectivism initially seemed attractive.  And I was fairly bright and inordinately ambitious.  Which is how I built it.  A successful consulting practice soon to go into its tenth year.  It’s all me.  No daddy money.  No mentors.  Not even a country club membership.

But I wasn’t always so smart.  I remember meeting some cute guy on a beach in Bermuda and he said some stuff and I knew he was quoting Ayn Rand and it was a bonding moment.

Thank god I got over it.  I am not proud of my Ayn Rand days.  Unlike the Republican caucus.  I am really grateful to my father.  He always talked very conservative and I know I leaned that way because I idolized him and thought he was very worldly and smart.  But, because I thought that, when he started questioning my right wing ideas, I really took notice.

And moved toward the center.  My mom and I were just talking about what a Canadian patriot he was.  And the more I watch American politics, the more proud – and relieved – I am of being Canadian.  We do need to pay attention though.  We hear their rhetoric too often and it’s easy to be seduced.

Like people are seduced by Ayn Rand.  Personally I think “The Fountainhead” and “Atlas Shrugged” are good reads.  Especially when you are young and impressionable.  But, thanks to my dad, even when I read them the first time, the critical reader in me was always in debate with the author.

Sure, it’s good to promote ambition instead of laziness.  Government can get out of control and is not inherently good.  But neither are rich people.  OMG, I am just learning why Stewart and Colbert have been talking about Ayn Rand so much and bringing up my fond memories of using “Atlas Shrugged” as a pretense to make out on a beach in Bermuda.

Paul Ryan’s views are far more scary!  And obviously he IS an idiot.  I thought his economic policies made it obvious already – but apparently he didn’t realize Ayn Rand was an atheist.  Seriously, dude?  He makes his staff read the novels anyway… some kind of sneaky Republican diluted, confused, pretending to be intellectual message… read this – but only take note of part of the message… sounds pretty Republican to me 🙂

Remember – government builds infrastructure.  Education is good.  A great education that actually teaches you to think rationally is even better.  So you can tell Ayn Rand to go to hell – altruism is good, you bitch.  Selfishness and unregulated capitalism are what’s gonna take us down.  And she is dead, having been born in likely the greatest capitalist economic sweet spot in the history of mankind, so why would she care…

Colbert is just interviewing an Ayn Rand expert.  Gotta love these boys.  Some of the stuff Ayn Rand said wasn’t bullshit.  Self reliance is good.  Mixing religion and politics is bad.  Apparently just before she died she denounced Reagan for bringing religion into politics.  So she would slug Paul Ryan.  And Mitt Romney?  She must be rolling in her grave!  That’s what you get for promoting crap values and trying to bring the world down, lady.  But thanks for the make out session on the beach in Bermuda – it was cinematic 😉

And Republicans…  Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert – and all their viewers – love you.  Keep talking crap!  As Jon so brilliantly showcased tonight, you dudes sound like Charlie Sheen.  SERIOUSLY???  I know The Expendables 2 will likely play better in foreign markets and exporting your “culture” seems to be on track, but people, you are electing the most powerful man in the world.  He should be someone the rest of the world is in awe of, not a gift to smart comedians.  If only Jon Stewart would run for President…

But first you would have to build the infrastructure to educate enough people to actually understand what he says… it’s brilliant…

http://www.thecomedynetwork.ca/Shows/TheDailyShow

Everyone with a brain should watch tonight’s episode.  It will make you feel better about the world, if only fleetingly 😉

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life philosophy, social commentary

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shaping a generation

I can remember watching the moon landing as a little kid – on colour TV because my father was always extravagant about appliances.  We were the first in the neighborhood to have one.  It did make the whole adventure even more surreal.  At that age, you have only just stopped believing the moon is made of green cheese so it was almost like a fairy story.

And at the time it seemed like a fairytale to everyone.  It’s hard to believe in the days this message I am typing will be broadcast to the entire world in a matter of minutes all via the magic wizards of the internet.  In my mom’s generation, talking about putting a man on the moon sounded like crazy talk.

My mom is only a generation younger than Neil Armstrong.  I heard he died last night and he had always seemed an impressive kind of guy so I read an article about him this morning.  And was not disappointed.

In one of the world’s greatest ironic moments, the box to click on his story was sitting right next to a box about Snooki.  She had a baby apparently.  WHY does anyone care?

It got me thinking about generations.  It’s a subject that interests me a lot.  It all began when I read a magazine article a couple of decades ago that talked about the impact the generation you are born into has on your life.  I am often lumped in with the “Baby Boomers” statistically.  I think they were the first to ever get a “generation title”.

So the sociology of the Baby Boomers always seems a little suspect to me.  I would say a generation is about a decade.  Maybe you don’t cut it off precisely at ten years but, give or take a few years, that is a period of time in which the members will have the same types of life experiences and a shared identity.  Yet somehow Baby Boomers  run from those born in 1946 to those born in 1964.  Eighteen years!  So the earliest baby boomers can be PARENTS of the same generation?  That just doesn’t make sense, people!

I think it means those are the post-war years in the United States where there were a lot of babies born compared to the years before.  It points out a lot of interesting facts about generations and the people who define them.  I lived in Europe for a few years and my biggest shock was going to some of the places devastated by two world wars and seeing photos of the rubble that had been in the place I was standing in 1945.  Most parts of the world were too busy re-building or too poor to be too focused on birthing a bunch of children  spoiled enough to take some of the worst traits of the second generation of wealth and apply them to an entire country.

To be born in the 1940s or early 1950s in North America.  It was as though almost everyone was a second generation Rockefeller.  The ground had been laid.  Jobs were easy to find.  The middle class was healthy.  North Americans still seemed to think there was a place in the world for literacy.  It was a glorious time.  But, as all the children of privilege who end up dead from a cocaine overdose could tell you, having it too easy doesn’t always work out so well in the end.  It ends up in things like Snooki…

I think one of the biggest insults you could do to Neil Armstrong is to put his photo next to Snooki’s!  Neil was born in 1930.  I checked my facts and technically he was too young to be part of Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation.”  But that’s the thing with generations.  We are all part of one.  And will be labeled whether we like it or not.  And we will be influenced by the economy and culture into which we are born.  It is an inevitable fact of life.  But how we respond – and what we do to improve the image of whatever generations we might get lumped into – is up to us as individuals.

I am sure there will be more talk of generations.  Certainly there will be more talk of economics and culture.  There is more to be said about the “greatest generation.”  But the real lesson we should be learning is that it shouldn’t take strife, hardship and deprivation – and a lot of dead people – to make us act better.  But humans are pretty stupid animals despite our oversize brains so it does seem that we aren’t so good at doing the right thing until we are forced into a corner.

That’s what really impressed me about Neil Armstrong.  He was famous!  Possibly more famous than Prince Harry.  Prince Harry would be wise to take a few tips from him 🙂  Not too many people’s sentences are so famous random people all over the world likely know what you said verbatim.

But he cared about space, about science and engineering, about his country, about his integrity.  He didn’t sell his soul to become a pitchman to make a ton of money off his fame.  He quit signing autographs so people wouldn’t use them for the wrong purpose and gave money to charity when he made a quick buck off something stupid (and made other people do the same).  He finally had a biography published but thought long and hard about who would write it.

He used his fame when he thought it could do good, making public statements protesting the dismantling of the US space program.   It is a little sad that the United States has become such a crass, materialistic place that this level of integrity by someone who could have so easily exploited his fame (Michael Phelps, you might want to take note 🙂 is almost as impressive and rare as the first man on the moon.

Current generation – think about it.  Your generation will be defined by the collective impression left by all its various members.  The more of you who take Neil Armstrong as your role model, the better your rep.

Your parents’ generation comes off as self-indulgent, narcissistic and materialist.  So, hey, the bar is REALLY low.  I see some of you spouting off in the comments section on the internet.  Make sure you spend at least as much time in the real world, finding things you believe in, doing something important with your lives –  and learning some grammar.

The opinions of people who sound smart  and know how to put together a grammatically correct sentence that incorporates facts carry a lot more weight.  “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.”  So much more impressive, inspiring and memorable than “WTF” 😉  And people even worry whether he said the “a”… one giant leap for literacy 🙂

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life philosophy, shining examples, social commentary

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handicapping the olympics…

Today a lot of history was made.  One doesn’t get to make that statement very often.  The expected – but still extraordinary – Michael Phelps won another gold medal!  It is going to very tough to ever beat his Olympic record.  And he has had a very positive impact on the sport of swimming.  I think the really tough part of his life starts tomorrow though.  How will he use all this fame and all those endorsements?  Will he actually do anything to make the world a better place?  Will he do anything really important?  Will he be as impressive as Johann Olav Koss?

Who is he you might ask?  I learned about Right to Play through my friend Pierre during the Vancouver Games.  Check it out…

http://www.righttoplay.com/International/about-us/Pages/History.aspx

And since Ryan Lochte’s mom told the media he was a slut he is getting press for more than swimming so he will be OK 🙂  Canada’s Rosie (MacLennan) got the first gold of the games so she will always have a place in our national history.  And apparently, not only did she do the nation proud, she also made up for her grandfather’s missed Olympic chance because of WWII.  A great story!  And she seems like one of those people it’s really easy to cheer for.

Like her teammate Ryan Cochrane, not making gold, but making silver feel like a victory for the whole country.  And the Brits!  How can we not love them?  Three gold medals in Athletics, a record.  And all at home.  What I loved the most was how gracious they all were, almost surprised they had won.  Not the practiced sound bite Michael Phelps gave but some genuine emotion and astonishment.  They all sounded like amateurs.  And the fantasy Olympics that sometimes seems to have been side tracked by all the sponsors…

And then there is MY 2012 Olympic crush – Oscar Pistorius.  The Blade Runner.  The dude without fibulas who just qualified for the semi-finals in the 400 m for the Olympic games.  The first Paralympic athlete who is also an Olympian.

But what is the most impressive is the kind of man he seems to be.  Apparently a lot of it is attributable to his mom.  He lost her as a teenager, which would give him leave to blame the world for all sorts of things.  But instead he is throwing the concept of handicapping on its head.  He comes from a poor country (South Africa).  He has no physical advantages; he actually has disadvantages.  But he is just there to soak it all up and enjoy his moment.

One thing I really like about CTV’s coverage is the extra information they provide about athletes, sports and physiology.  I’ve seen the profile on Oscar a few times now and there are a couple of statements that really stand out.  From an interview after his historic run:

“I thought about my mummy a lot today. She was kind of a bit of a hard core, she wouldn’t take no for an answer … She always said losers aren’t the person that gets involved and comes last, but it’s the person who doesn’t get involved.”

The other statement that really resonated was “I didn’t grow up thinking I had a disability.  I grew up thinking I just had different shoes.”

I hope Oscar makes the final.  And gets famous.  It seems highly likely that at least the second will happen.  He seems to embody all that is great and noble about the Olympics – and sport, a message that is hard to hear sometimes over the commercials promoting how you can get a McDonalds hamburger all over the world (ugh!) or use Tide to keep your red and white from bleeding.

If they gave a gold medal for charm, class and character, Oscar would get a gold 🙂  And so would his mom 🙂

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shining examples, social commentary

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reaching your potential…

I’m sure watching so much Olympic coverage is doing nothing for helping me reach MY potential but it has definitely provided lots to think about.  Just finished watching the Canadian women’s soccer (football) team go to the semi-final for the first time – after beating Great Britain on home turf.  Very exciting!  Especially now that I know a little about the game so can appreciate the skills more.  They face the USA in the semi-final.  Definitely dicey but one of the delightful things about the Olympics is the element of surprise.

http://www.ctvolympics.ca/field-sports/news/article/canada-advances-semis-with-win-over-great-britain.html

Which is why I am bored with Michael Phelps.  I feel a bit guilty.  I would never try to belittle his accomplishments.  I never watched anything from the 2008 Olympics because I was working at a level to rival any Olympic athlete’s training schedule.  So I only heard about the most decorated Olympian of all time once he was so famous everyone knew about him, whether you wanted to or not 🙂

That’s the thing.  He’s become so famous it’s become a bit tacky… and kind of boring.  I am far more impressed with everyone else in the pool who has been so successful in challenging him.  Obviously he has trained hard and is an incredible athlete but the commentators seem to have forgotten there is anyone else in the pool.  Yes, the gold medal is impressive but seriously, getting to the top three, even the top five, is a wild achievement and deserves a lot more attention than it gets.

Yet another example of how the media and the public seems to feel the twitter version of the world surpasses The Economist version of the world.  Sorry, people, but you are wrong.  You are missing so many points and illustrating the limited potential most human beings realize.  Because trying hard just seems like too much work.

There is a lot to reflect on when you watch the Olympics.  The irony that the Americans lead in gold medals and show a level of fitness that is world class while average Americans are shooting to lead the world in obesity and Type II diabetes.  The fact that over 200 countries come to the Olympics but most of the medals are won by a handful of rich countries with the resources to finance gold medals in the high technology 21st century.  The pity that only a small handful of athletes and sports will get prime time coverage and be celebrated on the world stage in a way that the Olympics is supposed to honour.

We all have to find our own perspective when we look at the world.  I think it might be partly my Canadian upbringing.  I love a self-deprecating sense of humour.  I love an underdog.  I love a smart analysis.

So one of the most interesting things I have heard so far in Olympic commentary was the comment how impressive it was that Chad le Clos was less than one quarter of a second behind Michael Phelps given le Clos’ lack of freakish genetics that would make him part fish-part man and highly adapted to swimming.

That’s the problem with just watching on the simple “who won the gold medal” level.  It’s all so much more complex.  First, the difference between the top five is normally less than a second or a point.  They are all exceptional and only occasionally is the gold medal winner much better than the silver on any real human scale.  And some are genetically lucky – or their country has more cash – or more interest in promoting their sport.  If they really wanted it all to reflect the ideals they pretend it does, they would handicap everyone to even the playing field.  Points would be deducted for genetic or economic advantage so that it would all reflect the training and effort of the athlete irrespective of the parentage or the country of birth.

Of course, nothing works like that.  And a few have written about Chad le Clos.  Good on them.  And apparently Michael Phelps was his hero.  And inspired lots of young swimmers.  So, maybe I am a little bored with Phelps – and would like to hear more about everyone else in the pool.  My heart goes out to Ryan Lochte, such an impressive swimmer and an engaging guy, but with the misfortune of being born to be in the shadow of Phelps.  But Phelps is an impressive guy and definitely deserves his celebrity a lot more than Snookie!

And more than the Royals.  Apparently if you are a member of the royal family and go to watch an Olympic game match you are a hero.  Seriously???  You don’t have a proper job and it is the least you can do to go out and support the athletes from your country.  In the best seats in the house.  I think there would be a long line who would be willing to do your “job” if it isn’t working for you.  Lucky genes with almost nothing else.  All you have to do is not act like a total jackass and you get accolades.  If only life was so lucky for the rest of us… 😉

But wouldn’t that be dull.  Personally I take my motivation from Chad and Ryan and the Canadian women’s soccer team.  From the less celebrated and more mortal who achieve astonishing feats.  One of my favourite medals these games was Brent Hayden winning a bronze in the 100m freestyle.  Big in Canada but no doubt ignored by the world.  But he didn’t make it to the finals in 2008 and this was his last Olympics.  And he made the podium!  He seemed so pleased and with such a great attitude about it all.

The message we should all be taking away from the Olympics, I think.  Sure, it’s mind-blowing the crap these competitive athletes will go through for a few minutes of glory.  And one should be respectful of their dedication and stamina – both mental and physical.  But in that greater arena we call life, are they any better than the rest of us?  Or are some of them worse?

My gold medal goes to people who make the world a better place.  It’s impossible to measure – even with handicapping.  If they get lucky, it will be acknowledged in the speeches and conversations at their funeral.  But by then, they will be dead…

So the way I measure the value of my life – and whether I am on track with my goals – is whether I seem to make other people happy, whether I am a positive influence, whether I remember to act and promote the concept of civilization.

Civilization, the golden rule and the simple message of “doing unto others as you would have them do unto you” will save the world and is the criteria on which we should all be judged – Olympic athletes or not.  We can all realize our potential to be someone who has the greatest positive impact on the world of which we are capable – and if we do that – every day – we will deserve our gold medal.  There will be no ceremony but it’s the one that really counts.

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life philosophy, shining examples, social commentary

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