The 97-Year-Old Olympian
The 97-Year-Old Olympian
And how we too can compete in the "three Olympics"
My family didn’t have a television in our house for a decade, from when I was 4 years old until I was 14. This wasn’t due to a lack of electricity or other resources; it was a deliberate decision by my parents to help my older brother and me focus more on our studies and other pursuits. We were both homeschooled—well before that was a reasonably common (or at least not unheard of) choice for some families.
I didn’t go to traditional school until I was in eighth grade; my brother was homeschooled all the way to college. I think we turned out fairly well, both with families of our own and terminal degrees and stable careers (my brother is an anesthesiologist, currently in the U.S. Navy’s Medical Corps). And we’re both reasonably adjusted socially, whatever that means.
But getting back to the television and our lack of one when I was a kid—there was a big exception to my parents’ rule. It happened every two years: the Olympics.
During the Olympics, my parents would borrow a television from someone, and my Dad would find some place to put it. I remember one year it was perched on a small table to the right of the piano.
We’d then watch as much as possible of whatever NBC decided to show: downhill skiing, ice skating, or bobsledding; track and field, diving, or gymnastics. We kept track of the medal counts among the countries, which typically resulted in us feeling even more star-spangled awesome about the United States.
So the Olympics bring back a fair amount of nostalgia for me. We don’t have to borrow a television to watch them anymore, as we have a couple of them in my house permanently, but watching the Games still makes me feel a bit like a kid getting something special.
The 2024 Summer Olympics are set to kick off in Paris on Friday, July 26, with an opening ceremony on the Seine River. In contrast to the typical stadium parade, apparently the athletes will be on boats representing their national delegations.
But as I consider the actual Olympics, I think also about another set of games—and another Olympian of sorts.
The Little Interrogator
“What’s your favorite day of the week? Your favorite season of the year? Buffett—Jimmy or Warren?”
It was sometime in 2001, and I was cornered.
In between each question, he smiled and listened. A man of short stature, he looked up at me with a twinkle of curiosity and amusement in his blue eyes. He was clearly enjoying himself.
His energy and wit far exceeded that of most 83-year-olds. And, as someone dating one of his granddaughters, I was fresh meat.
This was one of my first memories of Walter Nosal, an educational psychologist and the maternal grandfather of my now wife. And my ability to continue dating his granddaughter may have been influenced in a small way by answering his questions to his liking. Or at least he didn’t tell me that I failed. (My answers were “Monday,” “autumn,” and “Warren”—which, I suppose, indicated that I wasn’t a screw-up, or that I at least had enough intelligence to know the right answers given the context.)
Somehow, I escaped one of his favorite tests, an assessment of concentration, which was to count backwards from 100, by sevens. I do, however, remember some sort of exercise related to my breathing.
During the years that followed, I had the pleasure of interacting with this remarkable man many times. There are far too many interesting details about him to even summarize here. He was, for instance, a professor at John Carroll University for 66 years.
His 23 grandchildren, 43 great-grandchildren, all of the in-laws including me, and many others knew him simply as “Pop-pop.”
The Three Olympics
Pop-pop offered all kinds of different bits of wisdom, usually delivered in some sort of aphorism like, “You must domesticate before you educate.” But of his many bits of wisdom—which he offered freely to anyone who would listen or was within a close-enough radius—one of my favorites is his idea of “The Three Olympics.”
As he put it, “First there are Olympics of the body, then the mind, then the heart.”
The general meaning of this idea is that you must engage and develop yourself in all dimensions. It also implies that ignoring any of them might lessen your overall well-being.
It’s a novel way to remember an unoriginal idea: the timeless lesson of maintaining balance. The Olympics of the body is about doing the best you can to stay physically active. There’s so much evidence for the positive benefits of regular exercise—even just walking—that I don’t need to review it here.
The Olympics of the mind is about continually learning. Pursuing knowledge and mastery is an important component of our overall psychological well-being, and it helps us stay mentally engaged as we get older.
The Olympics of the heart has to do in part with what researchers call “psychological capital,” which includes aspects of hope, optimism, and resilience. Our well-being benefits greatly from these elements and from spirituality, self-compassion, and both forgiveness and gratitude.
Sometimes it’s difficult to find balance across these domains, but that doesn’t negate the value in paying attention to all three areas. And for me at least, it comes down to a question of priorities and spending my time wisely.
It forces me to ask myself questions like:
Am I prioritizing my family and faith appropriately?
Am I getting enough sleep?
Do I spend enough time helping people around me?
Will catching up on social media really help me become a better human in the long run?
Am I effectively shielding myself from distractions on a regular basis?
And thinking about Pop-pop reminds me specifically to pay attention to the balance across my “Three Olympics.” That’s the important lesson, I think—continuing to notice and work on all three, staying “in the game,” so to speak.
Pop-pop died at the age of 97 on July 12, 2015. His wisdom and wit live on in myriad ways, and he was certainly an Olympian in his own way.
So here’s to the Olympics in Paris, to the three Olympics of our daily lives, and to Pop-pop. To paraphrase how he simultaneously toasted his Jewish, Polish, and Catholic friends: “Shalom, sto lat, and ad majorem Dei gloriam.”