Daily Beauty, Day #25: Triumph

 I think this is an appropriate day to express my love for the Olympics. I love the Olympics. I await the games with great anticipation, and when they finally arrive, I am swept away into the stories of the events without fail. In my opinion, there are so many beautiful things about the Olympics that I don’t know quite where to begin.

There is, of course, the indescribable thrill of victory. Canada certainly experienced this today with gold medals from the women’s curling and hockey teams. The women’s hockey game was especially tense, with Canada emerging triumphant in an epic underdog story. With under four minutes to spare, returning from a two goal deficit seemed an unlikely outcome for the Canadian team. But despite the way it may have seemed, Canada made up the difference and scored the winning goal to earn the gold in overtime.

It’s a classic tale of a team come from behind. But I think there is something profound in this. Many people had stopped believing. Many people assumed the outcome and had already chalked up the game to a loss. And yet the players on the ice did not stop believing. They continued to play as though they believed they could win right up until the moment when they did.

I think that we need to translate this attitude a little more into our daily lives. There will be times when we believe in things that don’t turn out the way we want them to. But I think that we grow stronger for the believing, for the never giving up and for living life as though we are really living all the time, rather than merely going through the motions when our expectations are not immediately met.

Some of the stories in these Olympic Games have had “happy” endings. Others have not turned out as projected by the “experts” or aspired to by the athletes. But there is beauty and there is triumph in every one in which belief and perseverance had a presence, regardless of whether or not there was victory in a literal sense.

As I enjoy the last few days of the Games, I will definitely be cheering on my country and I will almost certainly be sitting on the edge of my seat. But I will also be looking for beauty. And I have a feeling that I will find it, no matter what the results eventually show.