Hope-A Football Life Lesson
September 10th, 2006 | by Frank |
Imagine if you will one of those “not so excited about it” moments in your life. That which is happening, in your mind anyway, just isn’t a big deal. You’re not expecting much, and while you’re not dreading it by any means, you have no doubt that everything could go horribly wrong.
And then something tremendously right happens. All at once this sensation seizes your heart. A flood of joy that you didn’t know you had in you comes from the deepest darkest parts of your stomach and, against the well-reasoned wishes of your brain, consumes your being. In an instant, your body and soul have allowed that which you had expressly forbidden to come in and sit in your favorite chair with its feet on the table.
Hope.
Such was the case 12 seconds after 1:05 (as football clocks reckon time) when a bolt of red, white and blue lightning in the form of Takeo Spikes hit the opposing Quarterback with such ferocity as to dislodge the ball from his hands, and the skepticism from each fan of the Buffalo Bills watching. Just like that, it was 7-0, and we were no longer a 5-11 team but… something else. Something uncertain, unwritten, unspoken. It’s that brilliant moment in Sandman when Morpheus tricks the demon into taking away everything, leaving just the void. In that mystery, that undefined place, there is hope.
“I think I can make it.” “We could win.” “I think he likes you.” “Do you think they got it for my birthday?” “She could be the one.”
It’s so strange, and amazing, how quickly our hearts can turn. If nothing else, it seems to speak volumes about what we as people crave in our lives. Whether nature or nurture, we do want good things to happen. Something to root for. Something to believe in, and by extension, a way to believe in ourselves.
And therein is the definition of drama-To have hope, is to care about the outcome. Once you care about the outcome, you throw yourself into it. Once you throw yourself into it, you either end up on top of the mountain, or crushed underneath it.
Such, again, was the case when, by the end of the game, Buffalo had squandered a ten-point lead to lose by two. Certainly they played much better than any had expected, but sometimes it’s hard to see the silver linings in the clouds when you’re buried under the mountain.
Looking back over the history of this team, or looking over the entirety of human history, a fair question is why do we keep having hope? What is the point of believing in things, when so few of them work out? Am I a fool for having got my hopes up? For having believed in a silly team for a few hours this afternoon? Why do we in our lives dig ourselves out from under the mountain every time one drops on us? Is this optimism just a filler for the void in ourselves, to keep us from freaking out when we see this space between ourselves and what could be?
Maybe. I, however, cannot bring myself to believe this. Something inside of me whispers that hope, and belief (and probably faith) is not a function of the outcome, but a function of the moment. Let’s face it, even when you succeed, success only lasts so long (just like failure). What makes hope powerful is that while you are there, in that moment, you are affirming that you are alive-in the face of all possible outcomes, you are focused on the best of all possible outcomes, and the possibility of its actualization.
And you probably feel good about it. So now, whether you succeed or fail, things go your way or don’t, you’ve had a moment of good feeling in your life-and that is probably what validates our hope. Why we keep going back to it. Insanity may be doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results, but true hope never really repeats itself. There is always next week, a chance it will work out, and the sun coming up tomorrow.
Not that I know any of this to be true. I just have hope.
