Humans will never cease to amaze me.

Once upon a time, I suspect that somebody decided to strap a couple of flat planks to her feet, the better to walk outside in the winter without sinking knee-deep into snow. As you do.

Later on, somebody else got bored and wondered what it would be like to strap a slightly fancier plank to his feet, the better to rocket down the side of a vertical snow-covered hill. For fun.

And then a whole bunch of other people saw him doing this and thought it looked like a fine idea, so they found their own planks, and it became a sort of game – a competition over who could make hurtling down impossible slopes with a plank strapped to their feet look the coolest.

I hadn’t suspected that humans could fly until tuning into the Olympic snowboarding qualifiers yesterday. Watching the folks who have mastered the art of launching themselves off high places at great speed, twisting themselves 900 degrees in the air before touching down as gracefully as birds do.

It’s enough to make me wonder. It is beautiful.

The opening ceremony in Beijing was beautiful, too, in a way. And it was sad, because they played the song Imagine and I wanted so badly for those words to come true, even a little.

But then the torch bearer was of Uyghur descent and the folks standing behind the man who spoke of peace and harmony stood perfectly still and smiled the whole time without moving an inch.

And I wish I understood, even though I suspect that I don’t want to.

I don’t want to believe that it isn’t going to be alright.

I don’t want to let myself believe that it will be, either, because I don’t want to be wrong.

I’ll believe when I see humans fly.