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Can that be good advice given the shadow over the Olympics in Beijing and the surrounding area, surrounded by a macabre frame?
Who wants to be part of perfidious propaganda that can only be effective if it has spectators in addition to the main actors on stage?
It is understandable that even sports fans want to look the other way in disgust or resignation.
But they are anticipating what, despite all the gloomy signs and terrible truths, is far from decided: who owns this sports festival, what it is dominated by, what message it sends.
In the next two weeks we will experience a wealth of first-class competitions, which are fully described here, from early in the morning German time until the afternoon.
With athletes who, after many years of intensive preparation for just this one Olympic moment, want to show their best.
What can become of it?
Magical, world-moving, like the breathtaking performance of the German figure skating couple four years ago.
An artwork.
Freedom led them to Olympia
Of course, fascinating downhill races, spectacular freestylers, overflying ski jumpers, the drama surrounding the falling favorite or the luck-kissed outsider distract from what sometimes makes everyday life difficult to bear. But there is much more behind this great spectacle. Not just the hard work, the so often quoted story of the exemplary values that top-class sport conveys as a school of education in a sober, performance-oriented society: discipline, reliability, toughness, determination, assertiveness as virtues for young climbers.
At second glance, the vast majority of Olympians also realize the freedom that brought them to the Olympic grove.
Namely being able to develop their talent, in whatever curious sport, without dirigisme, ideally guided solely by their own drive, supported by societies that allow themselves this wealth of diversity and the associated individual development opportunities.
Anyone who believes in this, including in the spread of this path at the informal meetings of the world's youth in the Olympic village, should definitely look to China, excited, expectant, critical of the superficial as well as the background of the competitions.
Because looking the other way also exposes athletes in a freer world to those powers that have begun to destroy what is worth preserving in the Olympic movement.
The fight is not lost yet.