Olympic Fire
03 August, 2012

Please Stand to the Olympic Anthem!’ – sounded throughout the world, glued to television screens, and almost eighty thousand spectators in the elegantly built Olympic stadium in London jumped to their feet to stand still and poised when the most commonly accepted solemn melody had once again united the Mankind in peace and good will.

The jubilant Olympic public was celebrating the start of the XXX Olympiad – the third Games, gloriously hosted by the Capital of the United Kingdom throughout the great Olympic history. I sat right in the heart of the Stadium’s press section, proudly representing our young darling Georgian Journal and lavishly handing out my business cards with the Paper’s beautiful logo, attracting the attention of other accredited journalists from all over the world. The sense of sensation was utterly overwhelming. Because the current Olympic Games is enjoying most of the world’s attention and there is almost no detail of it left unreported by the journalists of every direction and nationality, any written text about this event of events might not make any sense unless it happens to be the reflection of somebody’s individual emotionality and personal attitude. The ‘somebody’ of this particular scribble will certainly be me, ensconced at this right moment at one of the tribunes of the London Olympic Park and looking down the arena where the strongest of the best athletes of the world are in painful strain for the victory which could either be seconds away or not happening at all – all in the hands of the Almighty and definitely in their powerful athletic bodies. Back to the opening ceremony, this Olympic Fire looked like the biggest ever, warming and illuminating the enthusiastic Stadium   – the fire that is most needed to the World, hardly recovering from the freezing effect of the ill-famed Cold War. Many would think and probably agree that that the Olympic Fire is the only kind of fire the flames of which can generate the hope for letting the ice melt down completely. And it will if the world manages to keep up the healing quality of the Olympic Fire forever. Smiling faces and benevolent greetings between the strangers all over the place made the Olympics venue the biggest cauldron of the Globe in which all of us melted together, having genuinely cast all the hateful swords into lovable plough-shares. And still, I have never seen the event security so tight and so well organized, demanding very serious financial involvement which clearly means that the world is not yet as safe as one might want to be or might seem during the Olympics. Huge internal and international efforts were needed to guarantee the safety of the Games which is good and bad news at the same time: good because it is good to be safe and bad because we still need to be working hard for the safety we need. This is why the world Olympic movement is the most needed Modus Vivendi and Operandi in the current world. This is why the mankind is spending so much for the Olympic efforts to be, this is why there is such a fierce fight among the nations for the title of the Olympic host, and this is why the opening ceremonies are so grandiose and impressive. That night of the dramatic opening ceremony in London, I felt that I was organically connected to the global heart and mind, functioning for only one significant reason – to make the world a better place to live. And London had triumphantly achieved the cherished goal – the world had at that Olympic moment seemed much, much better and safer a place than it actually seems to be.

 

 

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