Reflections for a Sunday: Don't Live in the Past

"The past?” sniffs Agnes Keleti. “Let’s talk about the future. That’s what should be beautiful. The past is past but there is still a future."

Agnes Keleti

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I thought on my birthday week I'd celebrate the amazing Agnes Keleti who is 102 years old and is the world's oldest living Olympic champion!

I was born on June 6, 1956. Mostly, that day is remembered for wars. D-Day happened on my birthday. The 6-Day War did, too—a war my family narrowly escaped, as we were in Egypt just days before it started. We barely made it out of Egypt, into Lebanon and over the mountains of Syria into Turkey just hours before the borders closed. I celebrated my 11th birthday in Ankara, Turkey, the day war broke out.

So, with all that strife associated with my birthday, I’m happy to have found out about Agnes. She is a Holocaust survivor from Hungary who won a total of ten gymnastics medals, including five golds, at the 1952 Helsinki Games and the 1956 Melbourne Games.

Milana Nikolova:

At the age of 19, Keleti was set to be part of the Hungarian gymnastics team for the 1940 Olympics, but the event – which was due to be held in Tokyo – was cancelled due to World War II. In 1941, Keleti was expelled from her gymnastics club for being ‘non-Aryan’. Soon after, she managed to purchase a fake identity and began working as a maid in the Hungarian countryside.

While she was able to save her own life in this way, her father and a number of her relatives were amongst the more than 400,000 Jewish Hungarians killed at Auschwitz.

Yet not being able to compete throughout most of her twenties, and the hardships she endured, did not prevent her from becoming the oldest female gymnast to win an Olympic gold – in 1956, at the age of 35. It is another record she holds to this day.

Agnes returned to Hungary after the war. She doesn’t watch sports on TV, especially not gymnastics which she says isn’t very interesting. She prefers long walks in beautiful Budapest, and she was an avid rock climber, but those days are behind her now.

Agnes isn’t like most elderly folk, living in the past and telling the same old stories over and over to bored relatives. We all have those relatives, right—I don’t ever want to be one!

"The past?” sniffs Agnes. “Let’s talk about the future. That’s what should be beautiful. The past is past but there is still a future."

In these uncertain times, it’s nice to hear from someone who has seen the worst of humanity that she still believes in the future. If Agnes, who lived through the Holocaust and the slaughter of her family can still smile and look forward with hope in her heart, we should be able to, too.

Agnes loves children and she loves to teach them. When asked what she thinks is the most important thing children should learn, she said, “The joy of life.”

She doesn’t approve of the terrible strain put on young athletes’ bodies. They should train their minds first, not their bodies, she says. Life isn’t about winning medals, that’s the least important thing, it’s about living.

When asked how proud her medals make her feel, she said, "It's not the medals that are significant but the experiences that came with them. I loved gymnastics because it was possible to travel for free."

This is such a great perspective. I know so many people who were great athletes or were at the top of their careers and once it ended, they just went downhill. They never developed interests beyond that one thing that consumed them and when it was gone, they were just a shell of their former selves, without any other substance.

A lot of people never learn how to live with curiosity. It’s curiosity that keeps a spring in your step and a sharpness in your mind.

Agnes Keleti is a woman after my own heart. I love to travel. I can’t seem to settle down, although I know I should soon. Once my kids grew up, I just started taking off. I’m always packing my little bag and getting on a plane for somewhere. I’ve found so much inspiration, met so many incredible people. I’m so thankful for all the fantastic adventures.

Istanbul, my favorite city

Thank you, Agnes Keleti. I don’t know if I’ll make it to 102, I don’t know if the world will make it that far, but until whenever, I want to be just as joyful, just as loving, and just as interested in life as you are.

Oh, and I might love to travel but I can't think of a better way to spend my birthday than blowing out the candle with my grandsons. They are the future.