A Golden Temple

I watched more television during the Beijing Olympics this summer than I had watched in five years. Every night men and women from all of the world competed in swimming, gymnastics, track and field, beach volleyball, diving, synchronized swimming and my new favorite, water polo. It was a captivating summer of firsts including Iran and Bahrain's first ever Olympic medals, beach volleyball's first ever back-to-back gold medalists, and of course, the record breaker of all record breakers, swimming phenom Michael Phelps who on 08/08/08 finished the Olympics with an astonishing eight gold medals in eight events. Now his face is everywhere. Phelps will do for swimming what Tiger did for golf. Look for children everywhere to throw down their barbies and baseball bats in lieu of seven irons and a pair of goggles.

Every Olympic athlete is amazing and an inspiration, but why was Phelps able to do what no other human has ever done? Simple - the man is built for swimming. His body is a temple alright, a gold one. To us he looks like a gangly awkward 22-year-old with too many teeth, but his short legs, long torso, huge feet, 4% body fat and double joints make him perfectly engineered for gliding and propelling through the water with the least resistance and greatest speed. Contemplating Phelps' physique, a friend recently posed the question, "what if all of our bodies are perfectly engineered to be great at ONE thing and we never find it?"

Well, friends, unless consuming mass quantities of dark chocolate is an Olympic event, it seems I have sadly missed my calling.