Mrs. Heretic and I had plans for today, but after she watched the opening ceremonies yesterday of the 2024 Paris Olympics, she wanted to cancel our plans so she could watch. She's a sucker for three-minute documentaries of personal stories that crescendo toward an emotional climax. The swimmer whose dad died in a car crash because he was exhausted from taking his Olympian to early practice. The boxer whose aunt stepped in when everything fell apart. The volleyball player whose miscarriage nearly ended her career. The basketball player from Ivory Coast who just loves America so much. Mrs. Heretic's not the only one who loves this stuff. Melissa Kirsch wrote this morning in the Times about her love for picking an event and getting up to speed quickly to learn the what and the who and the so what. She admitted to being a "total sucker for a hyperemotional documentary featurette on that gymnast whose family sacrificed everything for her Olympic dreams."
I understand this feeling, but for many Olympics now, I've passed on it. There are so many events and so many athletes, and each athlete has a story worth hearing. We tend to only get to hear about those who stand a chance of medaling. Part of the story-building is to pick an athlete, give the audience a reason to care, and then give them an event with stakes. The easiest stakes are a chance at a medal. Even if I watched every possible second of coverage, I would miss so many stories. And think of all the international stories I can't even access because I don't have that nation's coverage, and I couldn't speak the language even if I did.
But what if I somehow could get the story of every athlete competing? How could I possibly do emotional justice to each of them? If the point of getting their stories before they compete is to appreciate that there's more at stake than just who wins, could I ever appreciate what's at stake enough? It's too many stories, and many of those stories end up pitting one person to root for against another. How to decide?
It's been years now since I rooted, I mean really rooted, for a team in sports. Not being able to love one side and hate the other robs me of the joy a lot of people feel in being fans, because it really is kind of fun to hate someone. But at some point, maybe during one of those "hyperemotional documentary featurettes" before a Super Bowl, I stopped being able to do it. Everyone--or maybe nearly everyone--is worth rooting for, and the universe doesn't have enough happy results to give out for all of them.
The narrator of Elizabeth McCracken's The Hero of This Book speculates, "Maybe it's necessary to hate categories of people, because it's too much to assume that everyone has a soul." When I try to watch the Olympics, especially the opening ceremony with its flood of people and countries I'll lie and tell Mrs. Heretic I've heard of, I'm overcome with an acute version of sonder, the realization that everyone else has an interior life as rich as my own. It is too much to take. So much hope, so much striving, so few medals. I'll catch the highlights after the fact.
