We are all faced with a daily challenge – does one focus on the roses or the poison ivy that shares their bed?

The 2024 Paris Olympics offered an opportunity to practice.

Here’s to hoping you took some time out to peruse the two-week event.

From start to finish, it was a cut above the rest.

Yes, I know, all Olympics are special. Or at least we are told they are.

This one really was. 

Things went on there that have the power to convert.

Convert? From what?

Well, how about division, anger, eternal victim scripts, winning is everything, vanity, progressivism and climate obsession manifesting in lousy food, cardboard beds  and no air-conditioning?

When watching these Olympics, one word kept coming to mind — normal.

Excepting when the control freaks at Woke Central were in charge, everything was so so normal.

The river Seine – at its series of magnificent bridges – was normal.

Notre-Dame, the Louvre, the Grand Palais, Opera Garnier, Champs-Élysées, and the ever-lasting specialness of the Eiffel Tower were all present in their glorious portrayal of normalcy.

Spoiler alert — If you haven’t been to Paris, pinch yourself for your naiveté. So much man-made beauty and elegance in one place is unrivaled. Take an umbrella and go there in November, when you can skip the lines and just walk into any place that catches your fancy. 

Sure, there were moments of the abnormal.

That silly rainbow coalition montage of the Last Supper or the Roman Festival of Bacchus or whatever that started things off was anything but normal. 

But just as dirty water shouldn’t be a distraction from a picnic on the Seine, Céline Dion’s rendition of “L’Hymne à l’amour” blew that earlier indulgent silliness out of their dirty water with her unbridled, magnificent and courageous normalcy.

NBC did an excellent job of bringing the event to life. Heck, even that bastion of woke puffery bridled itself with a steady emphasis on – yes – normal.

But the best bit of normal came at the hands of the world’s athletes – and especially America’s athletes.

With minimal exception, our guys and gals competed without rancor or arrogance.

They hugged, smiled, honored our country and – gasp – even praised God — repeatedly.  

Yes, once again, there were certainly exceptions.

The members of the men’s relay team were predictably great at strutting their stuff, but not so good at “pass the darn baton” teamwork.

Heck, this Olympics was so special that even Snoop Dog – the Pagan God of Narcissism — was mostly funny and mostly normal.

Though America and China tied for gold, America was way ahead in the overall medal count. 

I like that bit of normalcy most especially.

The Chinese Communist Virus came within a silly millimeter of killing me several years ago. I’ve since harbored a quiet resentment at the lingering impacts of the middle-kingdom’s despotic leadership’s gain of function enthusiasms.

But, with an attempt to model the Olympic-like traits of patience, positivity and pardon, I am not going to throw a party if the “We Will Rule the World” boys in red feel an itch to send their returning Olympians to a Nike sneaker factory.

One of the reasons this particular Olympics was so special is that it seemed to mirror an earlier moment in time.

In 1936, Hitler and Germany hosted his country’s shot at the Olympics.

That event was similarly positive and special.

Though tainted with Hitler’s megalomania and racist idealism, the featured guests – the athletes – modeled the true Olympic spirit of normalcy to a degree that subverted Hitler’s efforts to showcase the wonders of totalitarianism.

Shortly thereafter, most of those athletes were embroiled in their country’s piece of WW II.

Similarly, we live in a time where man’s fears, vanities and imprudence are seeding the world with clouds of darkness.

Here’s to hoping we figure things out before we start killing each other with the worldly enthusiasms of the past. 

In the meantime, we just got a chance to see the opposite of war.

We got to see men and women at their best.

We got to see excitement, skill, courage and love, moment after moment, participant after participant.

In a 1936-like age of mounting insanity, we got to see normal.

It lasted right up to the moment that the Olympic flag was passed to America.

From there, it was an all-too-typical low-class, low-style, and low-brow left-coast affair.

L.A. and Red-Hot Chili Peppers demonstrated that normal doesn’t come easy.

They’ve got the event in 2028 and have already committed to making it a “car-less experience.”

That’s code for everyone will be herded onto buses or sidewalks as prey for the criminals, thugs and vagrants currently perfecting their respective rages at cultural sanity.

Thanks to a whole lot of good people with an eye on normalcy, we will always have Paris.