I wish I didn’t care about sports.
It’s annoying, not to mention embarrassing, petty, and incredibly stupid to be made happy or sad by whether your preferred team of highly-paid grown men in pajamas prevails in a child’s game on television.
But there you have it.
When the Mariners—or the Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, even sometimes the Dodgers—win, I experience a little shot of dopamine that cheers me up more or less depending on the nature of the contest and how it played out. When those same teams lose, especially after enjoying a lead, it’s like a little poke in the ribs or tweak in the nose; I really don’t like it.
It bothers me that my reaction is quite inconsistent with the importance of the event; I’ve been known to feel worse about seeing the Mariners losing in the bottom of the ninth than reading news reports of another mass shooting or stock market crash. And then I feel worse that I feel bad, and so on, and so on.
I assume it’s possible to wean myself from this predicament; all I’d have to do is simply stop investing so much psychic energy in whether “my” teams wins or not. It shouldn’t be any harder than stopping biting my nails or giving up milk in my coffee.
And yet.
Here I sit, watching the Mariners blow another lead and damn if I’m not having a worse day than I was when they were winning. This surely makes no more sense than being displeased that Romeo and Juliet didn’t live happily ever after: for one thing, I can’t do anything about it and even if I could, so what? It’s not like my health, wealth, or general well-being is affected by the outcome.
Nevertheless, after well more than a half-century of this, I’m apparently stuck. I see only one way to not feel bad after this game: the M’s had better just come back and win.
It’s annoying, not to mention embarrassing, petty, and incredibly stupid to be made happy or sad by whether your preferred team of highly-paid grown men in pajamas prevails in a child’s game on television.
But there you have it.
When the Mariners—or the Pirates, Steelers, Penguins, even sometimes the Dodgers—win, I experience a little shot of dopamine that cheers me up more or less depending on the nature of the contest and how it played out. When those same teams lose, especially after enjoying a lead, it’s like a little poke in the ribs or tweak in the nose; I really don’t like it.
It bothers me that my reaction is quite inconsistent with the importance of the event; I’ve been known to feel worse about seeing the Mariners losing in the bottom of the ninth than reading news reports of another mass shooting or stock market crash. And then I feel worse that I feel bad, and so on, and so on.
I assume it’s possible to wean myself from this predicament; all I’d have to do is simply stop investing so much psychic energy in whether “my” teams wins or not. It shouldn’t be any harder than stopping biting my nails or giving up milk in my coffee.
And yet.
Here I sit, watching the Mariners blow another lead and damn if I’m not having a worse day than I was when they were winning. This surely makes no more sense than being displeased that Romeo and Juliet didn’t live happily ever after: for one thing, I can’t do anything about it and even if I could, so what? It’s not like my health, wealth, or general well-being is affected by the outcome.
Nevertheless, after well more than a half-century of this, I’m apparently stuck. I see only one way to not feel bad after this game: the M’s had better just come back and win.
No comments:
Post a Comment