Academic excellence are evidence of one's mental strength and
the perseverance as well as the desire to gain knowledge, to
understand how things work and the world around us.
While knowledge will never cease, one is often given a
certificate as a reward for his hard mental work once he shows
aptitude for a specialist subject, which will be good enough to
secure a job in the economy, based on his specialisation and be
paid according to market rates of supply and demand.
Sporting excellence are evidences of not only one's physical
strength, it is also evidence of his mental strength to overcome
the limits believed by everyone as facts of human or national
limitations.
While sporting activities are generally believed to make one
fit, it carries much more values that are gained from engaging in
it, such as sportsmanship behaviour, responsibility and pride in
achievement, etc. It is a youthful exhuberance with many
life's experience gained and should be celebrated, for we
adults were young once too.
It is not enough that our nation should be satisfied with
academic excellence, for alone without sports, the human body will
be subject to health and even mental issues later in life.
Thus the need to give equal balance to social funding
and national support into our youth through the elevation
of sports to greater glory such as the olympics, where our young
may know there are no physical or mental limits with regards to the
human body, if we tried hard enough.
Although some of the winners are imports, there is no need to be
ashamed of ourselves, for they are only temporary measures to give
hope to our own youthful citizens that they too, being human and
equal, can equally excel, if not better than them in time.
We as a nation aspires towards overall excellence, and sporting
glory is one aspiration that will bind us and unite us all as one,
sharing with our national sportsmen the agony of defeat, or the
truimph of victory, for it was our support, encouragement, and
funds that help these winners. ( even if they had lost, for to
participate alone is already a win, a glory some nations cannot
even achieve to meet the time trials).
So do stand tall, be proud. We singaporeans, every
citizen, had come a long way and have much to smile. Come what
may, we use our brains and brawns to survive and never say
die.
Congrats to our Singapore Olympic team and officials that made a
difference in the Beijing 2008 Olympics!
