So, how were you feeling at the end of the first half of the Bears vs. Packers game on Jan. 10? Gobsmacked? Frustrated? Depressed? Then, how did you feel at the end of the game? Euphoric? Triumphant?
And how about after Sunday’s game against the Rams?
Why do we sports fans choose to ride this “bipolar” emotional roller coaster when there are less “manic depressive” options available? A professor named Dan Wann, PhD, teaches a college course on the psychology of sports fans.
He posted online:
“Being a sports fan really does help individuals meet basic psychological needs. By being a fan of a particular team … fandom allows people to get in a group. If you reside in a local community and you follow the local team, it’s hard to feel lonely, it’s hard to feel isolated, and it gives you this critical link to others.
“The more the fan is identified with a local team, the greater that individual is likely to have a well-rounded sense of psychological health, lower levels of loneliness, lower levels of alienation, a higher sense of self-esteem, less social isolation.
“But if a fan feels disappointed at the loss, that’s just the natural reaction … and the problem is they can’t do a whole lot about it, right? They put their heart and soul into following the team and they’re just this idle spectator … they have this sort of sense of helplessness that can intensify the frustration when they lose. …
“But the beauty of it is that nobody I think has perfected coping strategies quite like sports fans have perfected coping strategies. … This has to be the only domain, the only voluntary activity where half the people know, literally, that they’re going to be upset when this thing they consume voluntarily is over.
“So we just have this way of convincing ourselves that it’s all going to be OK. It’s not OK now, but it’s going to be OK in the future. And that’s why fans, they just keep coming back.”
The Buddha, in contrast, taught that the reason we humans suffer is that we get attached to people and things.
A website called the Lion’s Roar teaches:
“In Buddhism, attachment (Sanskrit/Pali: upadana) refers to the ways we grasp or cling to other people, objects, ideas, or experiences. Clinging to false views, including the notion of a separate or permanent self, is considered especially problematic and to be abandoned.
“Clinging is identified as one of the main causes of suffering (dukkha) in our lives. Because everything must eventually change and die, all our attempts to cling to them are ultimately futile. This leads to great suffering as we inevitably lose that which we want to hold on to.”
So, are we setting ourselves up for “dukkha” when we attach our emotions to how a sports team performs?
Thai Buddhists advocate maintaining a kreng jai, a cool heart, the opposite of which is jai rawn, hot heart or jai mai dee, unsettled.
Who gets it right — Dr. Wann who contends that being a sports fan promotes emotional well-being or the Buddha who encourages us to maintain a cool heart?
Or another way to put it, “Which choice will more consistently promote emotional and physical well-being — sitting on a couch and tying how you feel to the outcome of a Saturday night football game or taking a hike in Thatcher Woods?”
A friend of mine is a passionate football fan. He is also a member of the Sounds Good Choir, a singing group for people over 55 and there is no audition required to join.
Football is a metaphor for our society. It is a competitive meritocracy in which some folks win and, by design, most lose. Its genius is that it facilitates the cream to rise to the top. The downside is that most of us are skim milk.
The reality in which we live and move and have our being is a competitive free market in which survival of the fittest rules.
In an online post titled, “Why do we keep believing Darwin? The problems with survival of the fittest,” Simone Buitendijk argues, “The Darwinian notion of ‘survival of the fittest’ is still too dominant in our thinking. And it’s getting in the way of societal progress through collaboration.
“Most of the present problems that face our planet can best be solved through careful collaboration between individuals, between groups, between institutions and between governments. They are so complicated, interrelated and threatening to the existence of the entire global population, that working together seems to be the only sane and effective way forward.
“The Darwinian notion that people are naturally driven toward chasing individual gains at the expense of others, and that using that egotistical motivation as the most straightforward and fastest way to success, often goes unchallenged. It is as if we are living in a constant Olympic Games. The winner takes it all, everyone else is a loser.”
Amen, Simone.