Today at the Olympics...

OK, I was impressed, even somewhat against my prejudices, by the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics.
(Excepting the Arctic Monkeys who just made a noise, but that might be down to my age.)
Hordes of people, together, having a good time.
Fit people, too, and I'm not just talking about the athletes: the drummers and other performers as well.

Yes, I enjoyed it, but a bit of me was feeling an utter outsider.
I could not even have walked around that track, or walked to take a seat in the stand without dire consequences,
and as for joining in with hundreds of others in a cooperative effort... five minutes an hour of just being with people is my limit, without incurring "payback".

No, a life of essentially enforced inactivity ("If you know what's good for you...")  is not the same as an easy life of leisure.  I suspect some who have friends or family members with ME/CFS don't get this.  It's not effortless laziness (with official approval, yet!) at all.

The sheer Herculean effort of resisting the temptation to *do something* out of frustration, or out of desire to achieve, out of boredom, out of wishing to stop just for a moment the nagging of idiots who don't understand but are sure they do, perfectly.

It requires so much discipline and practice, subtly employed since fighting with yourself also eats up precious resources and is counterproductive, that maybe it could be an Olympic event.

But when it's being done well there is precisely not much to show, which is why it can look like laziness or depressive apathy to the untrained eye.  Hmm.  I can't see it ever being a popular spectator sport.






Ha!  I have just thought of a sport or competition which is distantly akin: slow pipe smoking!  
The aim is, with a given amount of tobacco, to nurse that pipeful longer than any other competitor.
At least there you can have the excitement of seeing whose smoke  gives out first.
Yes, it can be found on YouTube... The world is always stranger than can be imagined.
And the presenters of Top Gear with pipes... Now that's just hilarious.

With CFS you take the fun wherever you can find it.  It can be done.
Another challenging event, perhaps: finding pleasures in tiny things.
Some of us with ME might even have a competitive edge there, but I'm not sure how it could be fairly judged.