Life - as I know it

February 20, 2006 - It's funny how life is. One moment you're on top of the world, a split second later, you could be spiraling down so fast that you don't know when you will hit rock bottom.

Take Italians figure skaters Barbara Fusar Poli and Maurizio Margaglio. Going into Sunday''s Olympic Original Dance competition, the Italians were on top of the world. They were sitting in the gold medal position, having danced/skated a flawless performance just two nights ago, in front of their home crowd - even though both have not skated competitively for four years. They decided to come out of retirement for the Turin Olympics, hoping, for that one last shot of glory.

Their performance was definitely sizzling - you couldn't take your eyes off them - and with the home crowd cheering and waving Italian flags everywhere, you would think they would feed off the audience's energy. And they did - until the last 5 seconds of their program, when both fell in a lift that they had practiced and done successfully so many times before. Stunned, the two were unable to react after the music stopped, and could only stare at each other with a WTF just happened written all over their foreheads. The two had fallen off the pedestal in just 2.5 minutes, with their shot for Olympic glory pretty much gone.

It's sad that this is what life is about. You have your highs, yet you have your lows. When you have your lows, you wonder why you're in such a position. Was it because you didn't cherish the moment when you were up high? Was it because you had unrealistic hopes and goals that were unreachable? the worst is when you know it's not your fault - it was because someone had done something that caused your downfall - yet you have no one to blame but yourself, because you were too trustworthy, or had too much hope and faith that any outsider could say you were being foolish to have set yourself so high up in the first place.

But how would you know when you're at your high if you have never experienced your lows? And unfortunately we don't know when the highs and lows will come. I'd like to think that life is like that - you just have act with the best information that you do have and make a decision base on that, and trust that it is the right decision. You don't know if that decision will make you fall or if it will help you rise above others. But isn't that better than not going for it at all?

I don't know why watching the Olympics, especially Ice Dancing (something that I've probably seen maybe three times in my life - btw, it's pretty cool, it's like mixing Skating with the Stars with Dancing with the Stars - hahaha), made me think of all these things. Perhaps it's the cough syrup, or perhaps I know the disappointment of rising and then falling so fast you don't know what hit you. Whatever it is, I feel bad for the Italians. But hey, at least they have the whole country behind them, right?