The first slip-up
So I forgot to post yesterday, so here's the first for today that's actually for yesterday :-P
In the spirit of the Olympics, this is my reflection on what happened in the men's figure skating -
Both Evan Lysacek and Yevgeny Plyushchenko skated awesome performances - but they had very different feelings about the outcome (granted one got gold and the other silver so that is definitely a factor). But in listening to Plyushchenko's arguments about why he deserved gold, I feel that the difference really is this: Lysacek used the rules and the new scoring system to his advantage - he made his program with the rules in mind. Whereas Plyushchenko seemed to have decided that he could win without accounting for the change in rules - that they didn't need to impact him. In an interview immediately after the medal ceremony, he essentially said that in the old 6.0 system he would have won. And maybe that's true - but he knew going into the program that the rules were changed and what the new scoring system was. It's not like he planned his program then arrived at the Olympics to learn that the rules had changed.
How often do we decide the rules don't apply to us? That we can rise above the rules? I think of this particularly in relation to faith - God gives us rules to follow - but many people, myself included, often seem to think these are guidelines and that we are strong enough to resist the issues surrounding them. We think that we can succeed without adjusting for those rules, and then we're surprised when it doesn't work out for us. And we're angry as well. The truth is, we know the rules, and if we choose to not account for them, we need to be ready to pay the price.
In the spirit of the Olympics, this is my reflection on what happened in the men's figure skating -
Both Evan Lysacek and Yevgeny Plyushchenko skated awesome performances - but they had very different feelings about the outcome (granted one got gold and the other silver so that is definitely a factor). But in listening to Plyushchenko's arguments about why he deserved gold, I feel that the difference really is this: Lysacek used the rules and the new scoring system to his advantage - he made his program with the rules in mind. Whereas Plyushchenko seemed to have decided that he could win without accounting for the change in rules - that they didn't need to impact him. In an interview immediately after the medal ceremony, he essentially said that in the old 6.0 system he would have won. And maybe that's true - but he knew going into the program that the rules were changed and what the new scoring system was. It's not like he planned his program then arrived at the Olympics to learn that the rules had changed.
How often do we decide the rules don't apply to us? That we can rise above the rules? I think of this particularly in relation to faith - God gives us rules to follow - but many people, myself included, often seem to think these are guidelines and that we are strong enough to resist the issues surrounding them. We think that we can succeed without adjusting for those rules, and then we're surprised when it doesn't work out for us. And we're angry as well. The truth is, we know the rules, and if we choose to not account for them, we need to be ready to pay the price.
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