Over and over, I've noticed how quickly I can choose a side to cheer for when watching sports. It's true even if I know little about the game, the teams, or the players. I assign favorable characteristics to one while disliking something in the other. Well, in lieu of betting, it does keep me engaged.
However, I'm better off when not being a fan. Viewing almost any sport seems to me pure, rather than contrived, story witnessing. And, no matter the oddsmaker's line, with all that can unfold, each event remains unpredictable. I like that.
If I care too much about any one team though, it stops being fun. I guess it's the emotional ups and downs that I can no longer stomach.
Still, I celebrate the accomplishments of various individuals, alone or together, and often switch back and forth rooting for different players or teams — in the same game!
But it's not just my inability to be a fan that has changed. Just last night, Susan and I were adding to our Netflix queue (a less than one bottle undertaking), but were hard pressed to find ten (our arbitrary target) in which we both had interest.
First off, forget horror and disaster films for us both. There's enough of that on the news.
One would think escapism would be appealing nowadays, but, instead, we've been agreeing lately on biographical documentaries. In such dire times, it seems real people facing and overcoming actual problems is what inspires us. Go figure.
Even when reading, I find myself picking up a work of non-fiction, mostly science or history, rather than my past more dramatic fare.
I guess being open minded, informed, and unattached finally has more appeal than blindly cheering on the home team, or losing oneself in endless variations of the same story.
It's almost as if we'd prefer to be awake, present, and engaged rather than to keep wasting time in hiding anymore. Almost.
Truth like Raindrops
In a shifting landscape, we lose our footing,
become unsure of where to step
Friendships go inactive
without a place to meet
In the mail this week a letter
opened my heart.
Honesty is like that —
dissolving a kind of rust
with sincerity
But there is nowhere for us to return
Only this moment
— blessed, cursed, or indifferent —
we share
like it
or not
A future is a slow unfolding thing,
inevitable, yet fluid
Oh, I know we might first destroy much of it
before discovering the steward within
but these words we utter to each other
are the beginning of everything needed
for healing
for reimagining ourselves
in the thin moving sliver
top a precious sphere
YOU ARE READING
Who Dad?!
Science-FictionAfter a revealing search for his birth mother, Lee declined to pursue the paternal side of the story. Little did he know how the fate of the planet itself was wrapped up in his own star-crossed origin. Only through the unexpected appearance of an al...
