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The games sports play with our minds and our hearts
Today, watching the Cincinnati-Cleveland football game, I found myself getting just a bit too into it, and therefore unhappy when the good guys lost. It probably didn't help that Fiancee was cheering for the opposition and poking at me about the contest. It didn't take me too long, though, to be reminded of what I already knew that Paula said so well recently. Of course what a football team does or doesn't do has no real, significant relationship to what I do. I don't have any control over the outcome and I really shouldn't feel particularly bad (or good) based on the outcome of the game--nothing to be proud of, nothing to be ashamed of (well... it might be fair to be ashamed of caring too much!).
It occurred to me, though, that there are a whole lot of people who wouldn't go along with this line of reasoning. You don't have to look very hard to see football fans (pick your sport, really) whose entire day, maybe even entire week, maybe an entire season of the year, will be significantly better or worse depending on the outcome of a sporting event. You don't have to look far to see people crying about the outcome of a big sporting event.
Why isn't this more generally viewed as crazy behavior? The athletes involved, they're welcome to get as emotional as they want, whether they're pee wee league or professional. There are certainly lessons to learn about winning and losing, but if you've given it your best effort and won you're allowed to feel awfully good about it, and if you've come up short, you're allowed to feel disappointed (as though anyone was asking my permission!). Really though, how does it make any sense for grown men or women to be that personally invested in how a sporting event turns out? I can grant some leeway for your own kids or people you know well, but even that only goes so far. Nonetheless, people do invest themselves that deeply in their sports teams.
Why? In part, I suppose, it's our desire to be part of a group; we're social creatures, and being a fan of such-and-such a team helps to fulfill that need in an age when our social bonds are more and more loose. I wonder if it isn't something more? We live in a culture which, theoretically at least, touts individual achievement as the pinnacle of success. At the same time, we live in a time when we are so interconnected, so aware of what's going on, that it's hard to imagine truly being "the best" at anything. Take sports as a prime example: how many played in high school who couldn't continue at the college level? College but not pros? Pros but not "the best"? It's not hard to look around and find people who are faster or stronger or smarter or wealthier or more charming or better looking or... whatever. Achievement was easier to come by when we lived our entire lives in on village, town, or city, or at least one country, continent, or culture. It would have been far easier to have a sense of individual achievement, success, even greatness, because the sample pool wasn't as large. Fast-forward to today: what, in his own mind, does the average 20-50 year old male have to tout as a personal achievement, particularly as a grand personal achievement, since so often our imaginations run toward the grandiose? Instead, lacking some monumental success in our own lives--we are not the superlative anything--we look to those who have been successful at something, the pros, and hitch our wagons to their success, take pride or shame in what our chosen (or, more likely, inherited) team does or doesn't accomplish--and then pass along the habit to the next generation, as though it's the most natural thing in the world.
I don't know--I'm struggling to comprehend this phenomenon, from the outside and from the periphery, as I can hear its siren song if I'm not carefully lashed to the mast of reason, soft though it may be for me.
Now, don't get me wrong--I think there's an awful lot that people--any people--could find to put their sense of achievement into, and I'm sure on some level all of us do, or at any rate I hope we do. As Paula suggests, there are "happy, healthy children, people who are stronger or happier for having known you, things that make others’ lives better, food, things of beauty, social and civic contributions." You might well read Rudyard Kipling's "If" and feel free to apply it equally to men and women, as that captures real accomplishment as well.
Your thoughts are, as always, welcome.