When the Majulah Singapura played on the hallowed grounds of the Marina Bay Floating Platfrom on the 14th of August and the national flag was hoisted up into the skies and the screens of millions around the world, it redefined the notion of national pride. To the Olympic movement, it was a new chapter of it’s history for it’s latest child was born. To many a Singaporean they found themselves shedding a tear or two. Many couldn’t fathom why while others never felt so proud before. They also couldn’t understand why. Call it the love for country. But this very event decided to question us-Love for country is good but why must love be confined to our borders?

 

And so began a call of action for all Singaporeans, young and old, sportsman or spectator, local or expatriate. Something unexpected was going to hit them. For the Youth Olympics was going to show them that age is only a statistic and that you can be as young as you want to be. That Singaporeans are going to learn what it means to dream again, to fight the good fight, to go the distance. This is the 21st Century and it seems the tables have turned. Where before the elders have guided us with our wisdom, now the youth were going to teach us how to live our lives. 

 

Where life was always on the fast pace, we learned on the expressways that sometimes, as we seek to get ahead, we sometimes need to give way to others on the path of victory. We learned from a little boy who ran fourteen kilometers chasing a flame on a pair of flip flops and a fuel of enthusiasm, that some things are worth braving the rain for. The journey of the Olympic flame itself that ignited the awe and wonderment of millions along the streets of Ancient Greece, Dhakka, Seoul, Orchard Road and Toa Payoh reminded us that sometimes the journey is the destination. 

 

A diver with the name of Myra Lee with a patched up back and pain spindled in her nerve showed us what it meant to take a leap of faith into the deep water. The American hurdler Coleman Gregory who pulled a hamstring but got up to finish his race limping through the pain barrier showed us that it doesn’t matter how we start or what happens along the way. What matters most is how we finish. So in the words of Nick Vujicic, the inspiration without arms and legs who has made a difference in the world-Are you going to finish strong?

 

The archer Abdul Dayyan shot a bullseye when anything less would cost him the medal. He showed us that we indeed could be counted on when the moment called for it. The way the athletes stood up for their continent instead of just their country showed us that out of many we are truly one. That alone we can do so little but together we can do so much more. Even if we are different. But that’s what makes all of us the same. And that’s what makes the difference. 

 

The soccer team from Haiti showed us that hope was indeed a waking dream. Devastated by an earthquake earlier this year, the team had performed a miracle of the human spirit just by being at the games. To make it into the finals of the football competition was just beyond their wildest dreams. But sometimes dreams come true. They showed us that sometimes the miracle is in our human spirit to keep soldiering on when others would have understood if we had given up. That we can always rise above the circumstances we find ourselves in.

 

And the Singapore team, even though they lost to the Haitians, awakened that dream of hope. Who showed through their courage and fighting spirit that body size doesn’t matter. What matters was the size of your heart. And that heart on the battlefield on the way to the bronze medal indeed won many other hearts on the stand. Singapore began to believe in local football again. Just like how many of us sometimes need to believe again in a long-lost dream that was once alive in different circumstances. 

 

And when the curtain closed and the flame is extinguished, that flame of passion and the light of the human spirit will go on to live in our hearts forever. 241 athletes were at the First Olympic Games in 1896 Greece. And over the course of history not many people around the world could say that we were all there where it started in Singapore. But for the athletes from 204 countries, the 6 million Singaporeans and thousands of other foreign delegates and volunteers, we all could. 

 

Athlete or spectator, organizer or volunteer, foreign or local we could all say that we were all part of a new beginning in our world. Where we learnt not just to be a winner but to be a champion. For a winner just crosses the finish line first. But a champion inspires the world with his or her character on the race tracks of life.