I love the Olympics. It’s a great reminder that there are no shortcuts in life. Because shortcuts, also known as cheating, is explicitly not allowed in Olympic competition. To reach a goal, there’s only the consistent grind. People love to see the end results of a triumphant victory, but behind that are countless sweaty sessions in a training gym. Successes are overnight only because on the television is the first time you’ve seen of some of these athletes.
The running joke regarding my mother country of China is that they perform superbly at individual events, but fail completely when it comes to team sports. If an event involves more than two people at once, it’s not going to go well for China. Doubles ping pong and synchronized diving? Not a problem. Football and basketball? A country of 1.4 billion souls can’t even qualify.
I have a theory on why this is so. In a way, Chinese culture is kind of selfish. For very good reasons, to be sure. The devastation wrought by the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution created an ingrained atmosphere of not enough to go around. The zero-sum pie is very small. Therefore, for the common Chinese citizen, whatever you can get for yourself, you hang onto it for dear life. There’s no honor is sharing, because that means you yourself won’t have enough to survive.
There was a time when public bathrooms in China did not have toilet paper. Any stock would be stolen very quickly. You’d have to bring your own.
The saying goes: there’s no ‘I’ in team. A team of selfish athletes isn’t going to go very far. When the glory of personal accomplishment (and the financial rewards) overshadow pride for country, it’s obvious to see how China continues to fail at team sports on the world stage.
Easy.