What Are the Odds of Winning at the Olympics?

Let's just be brutally honest here. I'm so uncoordinated that I've fallen down cross-country skiing. I've been known to trip over myself just walking down the street. So I never thought I'd be able to say I can relate to an athlete, let alone an olympic athlete. But for the first time in my life, I see that I'm not much different than they are (I'm talking philosophically here).

Athletics aside (obvious?) I'm totally on the same path. As I listen to the athletes' stories of training, sacrifice, failures and successes, I see myself - my life - as parallel to theirs. I've been training for years. I've written a novel, but not before having written thousands of pages, that now sit on my computer's hard drive, only after throwing the "hard copies" (pounds and pounds, reams upon reams of paper) into the recycling bin with a few choice words attached (sometimes louder and more...ahem...profound than at other times).

So I thought to myself, hmmm....what are the odds of getting published? Are they less than winning a medal? Or are my chances greater than the athletes competing in the Olympics?

You can probably guess what I did next. Right. Of course, I turned to everybody's BFF these days: Google.

What I found out was yes. My chances of getting published are greater than winning an Olympic medal. How much you ask? Well, I must be honest. I didn't go hog-wild and research this to the nth degree. I've got another novel to keep plugging away at and letters to keep writing and Target "fire-drill" runs to make and...you get my drift.

So here's what I found out: The odds of winning the olympics are 662,000 to 1. The odds of getting published are 3 out of approximately 10,000.

No problem. (I'm in confidence-booster mode now)

After thinking about that statistic, I realized the 662,000 athletes are the ones that have actually made it to the Olympics. What about all the other athletes that started out with their sights set on the Olympics that aren't even in that 662,000? In actuality, the number is even greater. Talk about passion, drive, and determination...I have a newfound respect for all the athletes out there...

All I have to do is beat out 9,997 other writers...Piece of cake, huh?

Truth

Recently, the notion of truth has been on my mind. Living your life truthfully gets thrown around all the time, but when you think about it, sometimes it's not so easy to be completely truthful to yourself. Living true to yourself, true to your life is to be constantly facing everything head-on. No hiding. No using crutches. No avoiding.

So how much truth do we need? Is it critical to be completely honest with ourselves? More importantly, how do we know we're being completely honest and truthful with ourselves? How do we know that we're living a truthful life?

And if we hide from the truth, stuff things into the subconscious where no one will find it, how do we get it back when we're ready? It's like when you hide a gift from your family, kids, or roommate and then can't find it for the life of you. Is that what happens when we stuff the truth away? Sometimes we can't find it when we go back?

If we do hide from the truth of our lives, is it a one-for-one proposition? Let's say we hide from the truth for say, ten years. Does it take exactly ten years to reveal the truth to ourselves when we're ready for it? Or is finding the truth all about how painful the truth is? Realizing you look like death warmed over (my mother's phrase) as a blonde certainly isn't even in the same ballpark as realizing you're truly unhappy with your life and have to change careers, husbands and find new friends! Yikes!

And, does hiding from the truth always have to be a negative? Do we stuff only bad truths way up in the attic? Are we ever guilty of hiding from the good truths of our lives? Now that's a ridiculous notion: "Yeah, my life's going really great, but I just can't face it..." WAH? Is that where "self-sabotage" (my phrase) comes in? Okay, that's another topic altogether...

Finally, is truth a slippery slope? Let's say we just hide from the truth of our lives just a little bit. Is it like when I had the talk about lying to my kids? Once you start, it can snowball and you don't know when to stop? So you start hiding from the truth a little bit and...bam! You're living in na na land, totally removed from every reality of your life. Dishonest to yourself and everyone around you...

Okay, so just a few things to ponder. It's winter, it's cold, it's snowing, and that my friends is the truth!