Dionysus Flubs Olympic Downhill
Well, the Olympic Games are over, but I can't get skier Bode Miller out of my head.
"Mom, I think you have a crush on that guy," said one of the impish Chattering boys.
"No, no, that's not it," I protested. (I didn't volunteer that I HAD seen a photo of Miller shirtless, and that he didn't look so good. He had the unbelievable nerve to show up in Turin overweight and out of shape.)
I drove home from the boys' school drop-off thinking that I should find a Jungian analyst. Not for myself. Just for my blog. The sports writers describing Bode Miller's free fall from rebel medal hopeful to unrepentant boozing loser, were still missing something, something a Jungian therapist with knowledge of archetypes and the hero's quest could fill us in on. The story of a downhill racer who is first exalted by the press for his idiosyncracies, then pilloried and hated for his adherence to them, really resonates. I think we all wonder what it would be like if a media spotlight ever illuminated us. What would mere mortals do with the power? Would we be true to ourselves? Would we deliver anything meaningful to others?
As I prepared to meditate, I wondered if I should just write about Miller as a problem drinker. His scathing remark over the weekend that "I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level" seems unforgivable, the quip of an addict who hasn't bottomed out yet. Maybe that's the angle to plunder. My Chattering Mind raced: oh, but would calling him a budding alcoholic be libelous? Probably not at this point.
Then, THE TRUTH (ta-da!) came to me. From the recesses of my brain that years ago read German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: Bode is a man struggling to balance the forces of Apollo (the sun god, artist, dreamer) and Dionysus (the intoxicated reveler, the god of secret rites). And Miller played out his effort to reconcile the split in the public eye on Mt. Olympus.
In the end, the personality of Dionysus, the God of Wine, dominated and destroyed the promising athlete. Miller let his more noble, virtuous Apollo fly out his trailer window. Or more likely--Apollo never made it to the Olympics at all. Miller then became the hapless groom who stood his country up five times in a row. He forgot to bring presents! Self-absorbed bore! We are furious with him.
He could have done better, we know he could have. But he didn't.
Here's a convoluted but still interesting paper written by college professor Bart Bryant on the subject of Nietzsche's work on the tension between Dionysus and Apollo. When the forces of the two are in balance, Bryant writes, "We have a god who, while fully grounded in himself, can nonetheless aim beyond himself...and see more. We have, it seems, a more Apollonian Dionysus."
"Mom, I think you have a crush on that guy," said one of the impish Chattering boys.
"No, no, that's not it," I protested. (I didn't volunteer that I HAD seen a photo of Miller shirtless, and that he didn't look so good. He had the unbelievable nerve to show up in Turin overweight and out of shape.)
I drove home from the boys' school drop-off thinking that I should find a Jungian analyst. Not for myself. Just for my blog. The sports writers describing Bode Miller's free fall from rebel medal hopeful to unrepentant boozing loser, were still missing something, something a Jungian therapist with knowledge of archetypes and the hero's quest could fill us in on. The story of a downhill racer who is first exalted by the press for his idiosyncracies, then pilloried and hated for his adherence to them, really resonates. I think we all wonder what it would be like if a media spotlight ever illuminated us. What would mere mortals do with the power? Would we be true to ourselves? Would we deliver anything meaningful to others?
As I prepared to meditate, I wondered if I should just write about Miller as a problem drinker. His scathing remark over the weekend that "I got to party and socialize at an Olympic level" seems unforgivable, the quip of an addict who hasn't bottomed out yet. Maybe that's the angle to plunder. My Chattering Mind raced: oh, but would calling him a budding alcoholic be libelous? Probably not at this point.
Then, THE TRUTH (ta-da!) came to me. From the recesses of my brain that years ago read German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: Bode is a man struggling to balance the forces of Apollo (the sun god, artist, dreamer) and Dionysus (the intoxicated reveler, the god of secret rites). And Miller played out his effort to reconcile the split in the public eye on Mt. Olympus.
In the end, the personality of Dionysus, the God of Wine, dominated and destroyed the promising athlete. Miller let his more noble, virtuous Apollo fly out his trailer window. Or more likely--Apollo never made it to the Olympics at all. Miller then became the hapless groom who stood his country up five times in a row. He forgot to bring presents! Self-absorbed bore! We are furious with him.
He could have done better, we know he could have. But he didn't.
Here's a convoluted but still interesting paper written by college professor Bart Bryant on the subject of Nietzsche's work on the tension between Dionysus and Apollo. When the forces of the two are in balance, Bryant writes, "We have a god who, while fully grounded in himself, can nonetheless aim beyond himself...and see more. We have, it seems, a more Apollonian Dionysus."
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