Expectations

The Notre Dame footballer who claimed a girlfriend, one who was ailing, and then died. National sympathy grew for him, then crash! It came out the girlfriend didn’t exist, no one had died, what was this guy thinking?

Well, turns out he wasn't thinking or scamming anyone. Someone else had done it to him and he believed it. He didn't have a face to face relationship with this other person, just an internet and email relationship. It grew. Into something he took as real. Then it turned out someone had set him up. And he became the laughing stock of the social media circuit.

Trouble is it didn't stop there. People began to wonder if Te’o was hiding something. Maybe he was gay and adopted a gigantic ruse to cover it up? Once this genie was out of the bottle things turned really wild.

Then finally a fellow confessed to a friend that he had done this as a prank, had done it to many others. But Te’o was a national name during a brief window of time, and the rest grew exponentially out of control. Real people were getting hurt. Real time.

I think human nature is a tricky thing. We love to adore people who inspire us. Lance Armstrong comes to mind. Athletes in professional sports, and those coming up the ranks in college play. It doesn’t matter if it is football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, tennis or any other sport. It just matters that some athlete demonstrates a skill well enough to garner attention.  Better yet if he or she has a story of hardship overcome – that really builds interest in the person. Soon thereafter a new idol has been formed. And we do much to build the pedestal for the person. It becomes news.

The next phase of that step, unfortunately, is tearing the idol down from the perch we placed them on.

Lance Armstrong is a good example. The cancer survivor goes on to health; national excellence in bicycling; then the international stage of that sport. A super story to feel good. A sport, by the way that is fraught with doping scandals for endurance purposes. Then the entire sport comes under an even larger cloud, and of course Armstrong’s saga doesn't help it any.

But then what of other sports? What of other expectations that stars must appear as heroic as possible, whether true to scale or not. We make them true up to our standards, don’t we? We want them to be bigger than life. It gives us a sense of possibility or joy or vicarious victory in their excellence. See what we can become!

If we take hero worship too far we feel a lessening of ourselves. Not far afterward we look for chinks in the armor of perfection. We hunt for the weakness, the real human being, and then the faults. Then the pulling down from the pedestal becomes an earnest lunge for the jugular.

Then we may feel sorry for the has-been-idol. But really we feel sorry for ourselves. We know what we have done. We have built up a false idol and we have torn him down. Both acts were false and done for the wrong reasons.

Sports is much like that in the popular venues. A big game on TV or the local arena/stadium. A time to celebrate something outside of myself. To lose myself in the play of others. Maybe even to wonder about how skilled some people are and wouldn't it be great if I could do something similar? Fantasy living, I call it. Event sports championship games or contests seem overblown and over hyped. Why do we do this? Why do we expect it?

Because it is entertainment? Because playing with the lives of others takes our minds off our own problems and failings?  Maybe. Maybe not.

Whether the questions are answered fully or not, it matters that we wonder about it. It matters that we admit we are human and flawed. The worth of any of us is how we handle the flawed life and still come out whole and a worthy person. Not perfect. Not up to expectations. But real. And human with heart, soul and emotions that make us so if we allow them to. And skills that will be useful for self and others if we hone them and use them wisely.

Dump the expectations. Focus on the true, the real. Then live life, our life, without using others.

I miss Lance Armstrong. I miss what he represented in my life. But I think I like him better now that I see the whole Lance.

January 23, 2013