Self Sacrifice and the Pursuit of the Unattainable Dream

We have Olympic fever. The Games are everywhere, previously obscure 'sports' like ping-pong are now news worthy items (North Korea is playing South Korea in the Gold Medal game of ping pong). I loves sports, it's war without the bloodshed, a liberal version of human competition where the winners are gracious and the losers win a piece of silver metal.

I was struck by a story that recently ran about a Chinese diver who was told (after she won a Gold Medal) that her Grandparents had died a year ago and that her mother had been battling breast cancer for the last 7 years. A couple of quick caveats, from the stories that I've read in the media, the diver in question was in a 'State Sanctioned' athlete school where she practiced or worked out for 10 hours a day (China is a fascist-communist government after all). And, from these media reports, it was her father's choice not to inform his daughter of these events. This is an important distinction for me, as it appears it was NOT a government order to keep her ignorant, but rather a conscience choice by her own father. The rest of what I say is based on that assumption.

14 years ago HBO ran a mini-series called 'From the Earth to the Moon.' Simply put, it was about the American space program. One scene stuck out in my mind, in one of the later Apollo missions, an Astronaut returns home to his family after a successful journey to the moon. Little Johnny, the Astronaut's son, causally mentioned that his tonsils were removed 3 years ago. Little Suzy then chimes in to say that her appendix was removed 2 years ago. The Astronaut turns to his wife and said, 'You didn't tell me?!' His wife, says, 'No, it wasn't important' the Astronaut replies, 'thank you.'

I didn't understand that exchange; why wasn't the Astronaut upset that he was left out of his children's life? So I asked my mother what happened. She pointed out that the children's ailments were minor and would have served no other cause than to concern and distract the Astronaut from his mission. So his wife decided to not tell him. The Mission was what was important. Getting to the moon and returning safely was the Mission. Both people, the wife and the Astronaut made sacrifices to achieve that mission.

The ultimate question is an individual one, what is important to you? Are you willing to sacrifice everything, even your life (as the Astronauts of Apollo 11 did) to achieve the mission? I can not judge the choices of the Chinese diver, her family made the sacrifice to help her achieve the mission of winning gold. I think there's a lesson there, sometimes the goal that you try to achieve is more important than the people in your life. It's a harsh lesson, but, sometimes, and rarely, it's a correct lesson.