The Youth Olympic Games – Why it makes sense to support it!

(To increase the font in this essay – please hold down the Ctrl key and continue to press +) Something magical happens when people come together and play a game – it matters little what that game is – at times this scene is played out cinematically like when the Germans and British once laid down their rifles crossed into no man’s land and played a game of soccer during Christmas eve somewhere along the jagged length of the Western Front in 1918. Or 20 years later when Jesse Owens won a gold medal in the 100 meters in the Olympics in Berlin by creaming Hitler’s super duper Aryan sprinters, thus reaffirming the aphorism that all men are born equal and should live, work and play under one sun.

I guess when people come together to play a game what they are doing is rekindling ancient bonds of kinship – I wouldn’t go as far as to say this represents a form of solidarity – but it wouldn’t be wrong to say, this is where it begins – as when sportsmen come to compete; what they are doing is reaffirming shared values of humanity, fairness and brotherhood – wonder no more why sports seems to be the one discursive space in which we can still scream at each other and even fight it out and yet we don’t come off as bitter and resentful when the final whistle blows. One of the few sanctuaries where the divisions can never be greater than the sum of the parts that binds us together; not enough at least to threaten the common good – it is this cultural heritage that ONLY sports is able to bring to bear on the minds of youths that is so needful these days.

As though we like to wax lyrical about how the world has become a smaller place due to the forces of globalization. It’s still remains a fractious and troubled place filled with emnity, mistrust and conflict. Where serious differences of schools of thoughts and states of minds continue to mire all hopes of improving the human condition – against this bleak dystopian backdrop –though we may speculate no end where might we, the human species begin fixing the ills of the world?  

Do we begin from the top down or the bottom up? Does the process of change begin at one person at a time or on a community-wide-scale? Should we work to change our systems or the people that operate within them?

No matter how we may wrestle with these vexing questions. At some point, no one can deny – you first have to start with a language that everyone can speak – and that’s something that ONLY sports can do – for sports like music remains one of few universal mediums that is able to slice through the Babel of differences and in some cases even silence the din of sectarianism and mindless violence that has traditionally divided man – and it is only when we still the mind; that we can really begin to sell the idea to the youths of today – that to make the world a better place; it first begins deep down in all of us at an individual level –  and only then can real goodness work its way out from there to make the rest of the world a better place. That is the first lesson that every sportsman learns – it all comes from the inside out.

Let’s show them how to play.

Darkness 2010 – This essay has been sponsored by the Interspacing Mercantile Guild and the Team Five O from Togoparts and the Bicycle Lovers Consortium / Anonymous Weekend Warriors / Changi Hell Riders / Airporters / Cycleworkers / Assoc of Bankers & Riders / JOJO etc etc etc etc etc.

“Gamers are one of the few people who understand the word sportsmanship beyond the dictionary meaning; that is why we are a tightest knit community on this planet. We are probably 100 times stronger than the Jewish lobby and the Freemasons put together. That is how powerful we are. Even the CIA and Mossad cannot argue with that!

But more importantly we all subscribe to a vampire code; it is a shared culture that ties me and you together to create this one indestructible idea of brotherhood –  where we all stand as one no matter whence we once came from and see the world from this one mythical line – where sportsmanship is everything…. the alpha and omega.

 It matters very little where you are playing the game. It could be somewhere in the warrens of Nairobi or in some spanky apartment overlooking Manhattan – no matter where you play; every gamer understands certain realities – it is darn difficult it is to reach the 8^th level of WoW. You never ever leave a brother behind and so on and so forth. If you don’t know these things, then you are like loose sand.

You simply don’t know and the chances are you will probably have no respect for anything or anyone including yourself – but if you do happen to know about these things. Then you have probably taken the trouble to work it through your head. And I am very happy for you. As I believe the game will add value to your life one day when you grow up, marry that girl, get a job and raise a family and start an enterprise like Microsoft etc. 

So it will not be too difficult for many of you to see the value of the Youth Olympic Games.  I see no reason why I should speak at length to put everyone here in a comatose state.

Neither will it be too difficult for any of you to relate to the fears, aspiration and hopes of these dedicated athletes. How different after all can they be from us? You have all felt the quickening; the thrill of the moment go through you as you all stand in anticipation on the firesteps weighing the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat – so will they when they make their way to their starting blocks to await the rent of the gun.

You have all fought right down to your last magazine. And so will they as they do battle with the pain barrier – so again, one more time, if you will – how different can they really be from us?

And all of you know only too well, how by just living and breathing and thinking and saying the things we do – we can either encourage them all or disable them. The decision is yours. Only I have no doubt that many of you will come to do the right thing! You see I happen to believe in each and everyone of you!“

Darkness 2010 to the Confederation concerning the Youth Olympics Games in Singapore – The Brotherhood Press 2010