Oblivious to the obvious

In sports, there is a virtue higher than sportsmanship. It is sensitivity. In 2006, Amelie Mauresmo won her first slam in Australia. But she did not pump her fist nor jump for joy. She didn’t even finish the match. Leading one set and one break up in the second, the much-anticipated final was aborted when Justine Henin retired due to an energy-sapping bum stomach. Mauresmo quietly sat next to a distraught Henin, slowly walked her victory, raising the trophy in tears.

In the 1996 Olympic 200m final, Jose Marie Perec came from behind to deny 36-year-old Merlene Ottey’s final chance at gold. But Perec did not burst into celebration. She merely raised her long, thin upper limbs and clasped her mouth in disbelief for beating the woman she deemed greatest sprinter. Years later, she would apologize to the Jamaican people for somehow stealing from their heroine her last shot at Olympic glory.

In the 1999 world athletics championship, Gail Devers crossed the line first in the 100m hurdles. Instead of celebrating, she immediately hugged the woman third to her, Ludmila Engquist, who was battling breast cancer, to assure her the bronze she just won glittered more than gold. Beyond sensitivity, it is called compassion, which revolting opposite is demanding more from underpaid health professionals who suffer and die in the line of duty. And for Devers, it was also empathy. The sprinter and hurdler survived a career-threatening thyroid disorder that almost had her feet amputated.

But many athletes are indifferent to sensitivity, a rule not found on paper but formed in core values. In life, many lack concern not only for sensitivity but also propriety, both are unwritten in our sense of humility and chivalry.

That is why some see nothing wrong with ostentatious display of pricey possessions in social media while others suffer, starve and die in the middle of pandemic. It’s theirs. Sure they have all the right to exercise all attributes of ownership, including sharing photographs of their property for all to see. But it’s not sharing, it’s flaunting, which, by the way, is not the habit of the legitimate rich. Bill Gates walks around plain and simple. The guy has nothing to prove, while many financial mortals steal, borrow or starve to look good.

There is a time and place for everything. Princess Diana refused to throw a party to celebrate her birthday while British troops were battling the Gulf war, a gesture separating royalty from aristocracy.

True, those who call out untimely parade of fancy things may not be nobly offended for others but motivated by personal envy. Bitter, you might say. But nothing justifies basking in the glory of stretching disparity between the rich and the poor during acute public need and emergency.

They may not have intended it. That is exactly the issue with insensitivity. You did not intend to remind the destitute about their suffering, of their desperate needing without having, while you have more than what you need without even asking. Lack of intention is not a defense for, but is the essence of insensitivity.

The equivalent of sensitivity in governance is statesmanship, when country and people precede personal interest and party loyalty. Be discerning, do not confuse emphatic statesmen with emphatic statement. Some find it hard to tell which is the joke.