Despite beating out every competitor on Earth but one, silver medalists can feel a special type of disappointment.

In a study that analyzed footage from the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona, they were consistently judged to look less happy than bronze medalists, both right after competition and atop the medal podium.

The explanation, the researchers theorized, was that the athletes were dwelling differently on what might have been: The silver medalists were wondering how great winning gold might have felt, while the bronze medalists were contemplating the letdown of not medaling at all.

The Olympics may have more pageantry, nationalism, and breathless TV commentators than daily life does, but the Games hold lessons about how achievement and its pursuit affect our happiness—even those of us who aren't competing to be the world's best at anything.

What the Olympics teach us is that although the promise of achievement can propel us forward, it comes with pitfalls that can undermine the satisfaction of actually achieving.

So should we all try to be more like the bronze medalists and focus on how things could be worse?

Not always, Tom Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University and a co-author of the study, told me.

While these "downward" comparisons can make people feel better, he pointed out that sometimes-dispiriting "upward" comparisons can motivate people to work harder on things they care about.

Each mindset has its benefits and drawbacks, so a prudent approach might be to strategically toggle between them.

No one has studied how athletes' results at the Olympics affect their long-term well-being, but Gilovich hypothesizes that over time, the sting of not winning gold would tend to fade in importance relative to the satisfaction of having gone to the Games.

Unfortunately, the gratification of attending will probably be little consolation to the athletes who have had to pull out of this year's contest after getting COVID-19.

And in some cases, the emotions of competition can stay raw for a long time: Abel Kiviat, an American who led the 1,500-meter race at the 1912 Olympics until another runner overtook him by surprise eight meters from the finish line, told an interviewer decades later, "I wake up sometimes and say, ‘What the heck happened to me?'"

He was 91 at the time of the interview, some 70 years removed from the race.

The sneaky Brit who beat Kiviat by one-tenth of a second was surely thrilled, but winning a gold medal presents its own distinct set of challenges.

Even being the greatest in the world doesn't guarantee lasting contentment. Because of what researchers call "hedonic adaptation," your happiness eventually tends to revert to a baseline level after a good (or bad) thing happens to you.

"Even something as amazing as getting a huge raise at work; as meeting the love of your life; as, potentially, winning a gold medal—we get used to it, because we're not focused on it day in and day out," Cassie Mogilner Holmes, a professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, told me.

The pursuit of gold medals and other dreams can be draining as well as energizing.

One difficulty, as Holmes pointed out, is that chasing a goal for the sake of glory or money (extrinsic motivations) can undermine your original passion for an activity (an intrinsic motivation).

Intrinsic motivations, she said, tend to bring people more happiness than extrinsic ones.

"This Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself when I came in—and I felt like I was still doing it for other people," the star American gymnast Simone Biles said after withdrawing from competition this week for the sake of her mental and physical health.

Not only is this decision likely to protect her well-being, but research suggests it might also protect her relationship with the sport she loves.

Another challenge for Biles, who had won four gold medals in 2016, might have been "the very different psychology involved when one is already at the pinnacle, and therefore is ‘playing not to lose,' versus when one is trying to get to the pinnacle and is playing to win," Gilovich said.

"The former is so much more stressful and difficult than the latter."

The decorated American swimmer Mark Spitz, who won seven gold medals in Munich in 1972, articulated this anxiety before his seventh race that year: "If I swim six and win six, I'll be a hero. If I swim seven and win six, I'll be a failure."

Whatever happens during competition, Olympians can experience a brutal comedown once the Games are over.

Several athletes, including the American gold-medalist swimmers Michael Phelps and Allison Schmitt, have said that they experienced depression after their successes.

In a blog post titled "Post-Olympic Stress Disorder," the American judo competitors Taraje Williams-Murray and Rhadi Ferguson, who were teammates in 2004, wrote that life after the Games could feel "sickeningly mundane" and was "a lot different than viewing the world from the lofty vantage point of ‘Mount Olympics.'"

Competing at the very highest level can leave some athletes feeling as though they've peaked and don't have a next logical goal to pursue. Continue reading

With all eyes on Brazil this summer for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, Cafod said that the plight of Brazil's indigenous peoples and the Amazon should be centre stage.Read more

To "live for today" is precisely what we all do, all of us, believers and not. Christians do not neglect present exigencies just because they believe there is a afterlife. Rather, the call of eternal life makes this world more, not less important. To claim that Christians do not care about today, so wrapped up are they in what is to come, is to confuse Christianity with millenarian cultists, which is what we are not.

Heaven and hell, by the way, are not places - they are states. Heaven is the state of seeing the Beatific vision; hell is the state of being utterly cut off from God. The idea of these being places either above or below us is persistent, and has its roots in Classical literature, but is certainly not taught by the Church.
Again, the nation-state may well engage in war with other states, but it is important to realise that the nation exists to defend and protect its citizens. Anarchy, in the classical meaning of the word, is envisioned as some sort of utopia, but in practice, where the state withers away, anarchy of the most non-benign type succeeds. Look at Somalia today. Look at Lebanon in the time of its civil war. Look at England under King Stephen. The withering away of the state does not lead to peace - but the complete opposite.

As for religion withering away and leading to peace - have a look at some of the avowedly atheist states of the twentieth century. Continue reading

Image: ucanews.com

"Rowing is the perfect metaphor for life," says Father Vladimir Feltzmann, 73, who was one of the Catholic Church of England and Wales' roaming chaplains for the London Olympics and a former competition rower. "You see the past; you can't see the future. The only person who sees the future is the cox. Christ is the cox. You row backwards into the future so the past is in front of you and the future is behind you. Because you are rowing backwards you need to have great faith."

Feltzmann, who likes to be known as Father Vlad, is one of 13 British Catholic priests to have been assigned a role at the London Games. During the games most of these priests were based out of the Olympic Park in Stratford, East London, where the majority of the venues were situated. They also celebrated daily Mass at the Athletes' Village. Several hundred thousand people came into the park each day and the priests were on hand for a variety of reasons, from giving information on Catholic churches in London to administering Last Rites.

An estimated 4.5 million visitors arrived in London during the games, and many of them, especially from overseas, were Roman Catholic. Feltzmann roamed among the Central London transport hubs near to the events. After nearly 50 years a priest, Father Vlad has an eye for a situation that may require his pastoral intervention.

"Near each venue there are people involved in security, accommodation, public relations, food supplies and ticket collection. Then there are all the people who arrive for the event. If only 1 per cent of these people suffer bereavement back home, that could be thousands of people who will need help and support-it might be for confession or people who want to pour their hearts out because they are hurting. It will just be a question of walking up and saying, 'Hello, I'm Fr Vlad. If you have a problem here's my card.' I will show them where the local church is or I can show them where their nearest ethnic chaplaincy is." Continue reading

Image: Stuff

Oscar Pistorius is known as the "fastest man on no legs," and the "Blade Runner," for the blade-like prosthetics he uses while running.

Pistorius was born without his fibula, the bone between the knee and the ankle. He had a double amputation below the knee, which made it easier for him to learn to walk on prosthetics.

Growing up, his parents never treated him differently than his siblings. In fact, in the mornings his mother would say, "Carl put on your shoes. Oscar you put on your prosthetic legs, and that's the last I want to hear about it." It's not a surprise then that wearing prosthetics didn't stop Pistorius from participating in school sports, like tennis, water polo, and rugby.

In 2003 he began running to recover from a knee injury, and in 2004 went to the Athens Paralympics and won gold for the 200 meter, breaking the world record for his class.

Because he was improving so much, he wanted to compete against able-bodied athletes. At first he wasn't allowed to, but eventually the rule was reversed, making it possible for him to compete in this year's Olympics.

Pistorius probably won't win a medal (his personal best on the 400 is 45.07 seconds; the world record is 43.18) but you can bet everyone will still be watching him. His story is an inspirational triumph of the human will and ability.

But I also like this story because it reminds me that our society's obsession over physical perfection is unfounded. We continue to develop more sophisticated prenatal testing to identify birth defects and other conditions, but too often that data isn't used to help unborn children, but as an excuse to abort them and "try again." For example, about 90% of fetuses identified as having Down syndrome are aborted.

The reason for the abortion is often concern that the child won't have a good "quality of life," yet who can say what someone's life will be like? Pistorius's parents would no doubt have been satisfied if he had been able to live a "normal" life from a wheel chair, and were happy that he could do so with prosthetics. But who could have predicted a double leg amputee would make it to the Olympics? For running?

Even if a person can't achieve an earthly measure of success that doesn't mean their life isn't worth living. The Church teaches us that "the dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God" (CCC 1700). The value of our life and worthiness as a person isn't tied to our accomplishments or abilities, but is intrinsic to our nature, a gift from God that no one can take away.

So when as you're watching the Olympics, by all means, be amazed by the athletic prowess of the athletes, but don't forget that we shouldn't judge the value of human life by such standards.

Oscar Pistorius will be running in the men's 4×400 and 4×400 relay on August 4 and August 9.

He'll also be running in the Paralympic games, which begin August 29.

First published in Life-Teen by Megan Bodenschatz

Megan will read anything that stands still long enough. She also loves going to the movies, meeting people from other countries, and spending time with her 16 cousins. She usually win the "Youngest-Person-at-Daily-Mass Award" whenever she goes.

One such person is Father Geoff Hilton, a priest from Salford diocese in the north of England, who will be serving as one of the Olympic chaplains to athletes competing in the 2012 Games in London, Catholic News Service reports.

It was because of his sporting prowess that the former police officer from Manchester was hand-picked to become one of 16 official Catholic chaplains appointed by the Olympics organising committee.

Continue reading

Religious symbols have been banned from a "faith" badge designed for chaplains at the London Games in case they cause offence.