There's reality TV. And then there are the Olympics. The real reality TV.
All the drama. The triple axles on the ice. The amazing jumps on the ski slopes. The gravity-defying flight of the snowboarders.
Oh, and the falls. The missed cues. The bad starts. The crashes.
And then there are the replays. Of the memorable performances. And, the mess-ups.
Whenever the Winter Olympics come around, I have a persistent memory that keeps flashing back in my brain.
It was February, and I was speaking at a conference in Holland. The Winter Olympics were going on in Europe that year, but they weren't on my radar. Until the afternoon I had the TV on in my room while I was getting dressed for the next meeting. The commentary was all in Dutch - which was all Greek to me. Until the announcer spoke a name I knew.
I'm a typical American. Football, baseball, basketball. Luge, bobsled, slopestyle, halfpipe - not so much. But, like millions of others, there's something about the Olympics that draws me in. To watch sports I know little about.
Because of the drama. The human drama.
The world's best on the world stage, with much of their life invested in what will be only minutes of their life. Giving it all for the glory of winning. Or the agony of losing.
I don't skate on a world stage. I won't be winning even an aluminum medal. But there are Olympic takeaways for me.
Like how to handle losing. Stinging setbacks. Bitter disappointments.
We've already been able to see some examples in the Games at Sochi.
No one has been the face of Team USA more than snowboarder Shaun White. With two gold medals in the halfpipe, a third win would have made history.
He didn't win anything. No gold, no silver, no bronze.
But in the midst of what had to be a crushing disappointment, he had some helpful perspective. For all of us who've watched a dream slip away.
He said, "This is just one part of who I am - a big part - but I want to be more than just that."
There's all the difference in the world between, "I failed" and "I'm a failure." Yes, you may have fallen short athletically, academically or at work. Or even more significantly, in a major life relationship.
But "I've failed" doesn't mean "I'm a failure." You aren't what you do. You are your character, your God-given worth - which has nothing to do with your performance.
No setback, no broken dream can rob you of you. Unless you let it.
Skier Bode Miller knows the glory. A five-time Olympic medalist. But in Sochi, he finished eighth in the men's downhill.
In the midst of the disappointment, one reporter said, "He painfully dissected what went wrong." Miller said, "I think everyone wants to find the answers as to why it didn't go better."
When I've messed up, there are always lessons to learn. That can, if I'll man up to the responsibility, keep me from messing up again.
Learn the lesson. Don't dwell on the failure. One women's cross country star, who was expected to medal for the USA, said this after finishing as an also-ran: "So I'm just going to put today in a box and move on to the next one."
Erin Hamlin just became the first American to win an Olympic medal in singles luge.
She was a favorite to do that in Vancouver in 2010. She was out of medal contention after the first heat.
This week she said, "I was really disappointed, and I knew that's not how I wanted to end my Olympic legacy. It was super-motivating."
I like that. Dwelling on the past is futile. It can't be changed. But the future is yet to be written.
It's been a big deal whenever one of our grandchildren got to 20 pounds. Because that's when you get to turn your car seat around! No more looking at where you've already been. From now on, it's all eyes on where I'm going!
Great way to live.
Great way to be a "comeback kid."
My team, the New York Giants, decided to not even show up for the playoffs this year. Oh, the Super Bowl was in their stadium, but - how sad it is - there was no blue and white on the field.
I was expecting a "gunfight at the OK Corral" kind of game. Uh, it was more like only one guy showed up with a gun.
Oddsmakers were predicting Denver was going to win by one point. They lost 43-8.
But Denver Broncos defensive end Shaun Phillips managed to emerge from that blowout a winner. Where it really counts.
Shaun texted his son Jaylen and said, "Sorry I let you down."
His son's answer changed everything. "It's OK daddy u r still my hero."
Boom! Perspective. Playing in the Super Bowl - big accomplishment. Being a super dad - the biggest victory a man can win.
And suddenly, Shaun was reminded of where putting points on the board matters most. He told his son, "Well, at least we get to hang out now."
That little exchange on Super Bowl Sunday is a message for every one of us someone calls dad.
It was a dark cloud over Super Bowl Sunday. News that rocked Hollywood and Broadway. And countless everyday folks who won't forget the compelling characters he created on the screen.
Academy Award-winning actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman, found dead in his apartment of an alleged drug overdose. He was only 46.
Social media were filled with the grieving reactions of so many stars. Words like "devastated" and "heartbroken" showed up over and over.
Tyler's story on the news really touched me. He showed me what makes someone a hero. In this case, an eight-year-old hero.
Since he had Martin Luther King Day out of school, Tyler went to stay at his grandpa's trailer for the night. He wasn't the only one. Nine people slept that night in that little trailer.
Tyler was awakened by the fire next to him. The blanket covering his four-year-old cousin was in flames.
Dear Justin -
I'm a grandfather. I've got six grandsons - can't believe it! One is almost your age.
So when I read about your speeding trouble and saw you in a jail jumpsuit last week, my grandfather's heart was sad.
I know you've gotten it all from people. Affection. Attack. Sympathetic. Snarky.
We'll put up with a lot from our politicians. But not everything.
We really don't like it when someone in power abuses that power. For personal gain. Personal revenge. Covering up wrongdoing. Or exploiting other people.
Right now, one former governor is in the news for allegedly using his position to feather his own financial nest. And accusations are flying about another governor who some say used his power to punish or intimidate. So far, no evidence that proves the accusations. But accusations are sometimes all it takes to turn public opinion.
This year's flu is just plain nasty. And dangerous. My doctor told me he's really concerned about how high the death toll is in our state this early in the season.
Last night, a friend texted and said, "It's time for me to descend into the nightly coughing abyss." We've had some family members spend some time in that abyss - so we know what they're talking about.
One thing that's unusual this year is the number of younger people who are dying from the flu. One reason, they say, may be that only about 30% of those in the 25-50 age group have gotten a flu shot.
Well, Pope Francis has done it again. Been the kind of normal human that's made him almost rock star popular with the press.
He was doing infant baptisms in the reverent environs of the Sistine Chapel - where the princes of the Church elected him Pope. He said that, while the singing of the choirs was wonderful, the cries of the babies made the most beautiful music in the room.
Then he did that "human" thing again. In essence, he said, "If your baby is hungry, Mother, go ahead and feed him." In the Sistine Chapel.
