So often in our mass media-driven society, we hear news and yet we barely notice it, much less take any action upon it. For instance, I was watching the Winter Olympics last weekend and the commentary on the athletics programs sounded pretty grim, to say the least. One voice said that the United States was getting hammered on the golf field; other voices said that Russia was going to be the favorite and that they were favored for the medals. And of course the commentary continued with Olympic speed skaters and their gold medals being called in over again. It was almost as if someone was saying how dumb our athletes were.
Yes, the world of sports is huge and everyone knows about the various sports that are played in various countries and these folks know more about their sport than the fans who follow their games. Still, the news is needed and newspapers and television stations need to report the news as soon as it happens so that the rest of us can have something to make us sit up and take notice. It’s almost as if they think we’re stupid and thus we need to keep them off our back and stop listening to them.
In fact, after I heard the commentator talk about how stupid our athletes were I promised myself I would never listen to that type of trash talk. Apparently I can’t just refuse to be distracted by negative news and I’ll do whatever I can to stay focused on the races. My challenge to myself is to try to remember a time when I didn’t pay any attention to the news and I wasn’t totally consumed by my own race or even my opponents. I’ll always try to remember those days when I was just looking at the standings and trying to figure out which racers were going to get my money for the week. Maybe someday those days will come back and they will be better than they are right now.