Four feelings I have never had: 1. Just Happy to Be Here

I'm reading a book, Devil at my Heels, by Louis Zamperini. It's a good book and he has an interesting story. He was a bit of a juvenile delinquent who became an Olympic runner and then was a prisoner of war during WW II.

When he writes about the Olympics (he placed 8th) he says how great it felt to take part, what a great experience it was. People say that the point of the Olympics, like life,is not to win but to take part. I competed for 14 years and I never felt that way for one second. Don't get me wrong, I made good friends, benefited from wonderful mentors, saw a lot of the world. However, competition wasn't necessary for any of that. I have made friends, traveled the world and had wonderful mentors as a student and in my career. I teach judo with some really good people.

However, the only point of competition for me was to train as hard as possible and learn as much as possible to beat as many people as possible as decisively as possible. I had zero interest in opening ceremonies, closing ceremonies or team uniforms (I gave 90% of mine away to people who helped me train).

Women's judo was not an Olympic sport until after I retired and I cared not at all because during most of my competitive career countries were boycotting the Olympics and I wanted to be champion of the whole world, not half of it.

My point isn't that Zamperini is wrong and I was right or vice versa. It's simply to me, it is a foreign concept - "happy to be here" paired with competition. I want my partying and vacations separate from beating people up. That's probably why I had a shorter competitive career than a lot of people I knew. Once I had reached my peak as a competitor, I was done.

It's like that slogan, "Join the army, travel to exotic locations, meet new people and kill them." I think the goals are contradictory,no?

P.S. I don't mean I have never had the experience of just happy to be alive or happy to be in a place. I have that a lot - when I'm with my family, at work, on vacation. When competing, no, it was all business.

P.P.S. In case you are wondering, the other three things I have never felt are:

2. The desire to stay home with my children full-time
3.  Competition with other parents or the need to justify myself as a mother.
4. Attracted to other women/ wanting to be a man - yes, I realize those are pretty much completely different things but I put them together under sex and gender because this is my blog, so there.

Will get to blogging about those when I get a minute but here is my synopsis.

• If you want to stay home with your children and can afford it, good for you. It's not for me.
• Don't compete through your children, you weirdo. Let them live their own lives and you live yours.
• Who you have sex with or what you want to do in your own life is none of my business. And I don't check out the person in the bathroom stall next to me because I mind my own business.

P.P.S. If you are getting ready to comment about how I am a terrible person because I don't feel about these things the way you do, just know that unless you are a member of my family or a close friend I don't care what you think about me. So, maybe that should be a fifth blog post. Also, if you are a family member, why are you posting disagreements on my blog? Did you lose my number?

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