In Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion makes a remark about the importance of being on nodding terms with our past selves. Without maintaining at least a polite friendliness to those we once were, we run the risk of seeing ghosts return to the present in the most unexpected ways or at the most unwelcome times.
Next week, I'm going to post the first of a series titled 'The Final Exam'. The idea is to look at one of these past selves and try to better understand one of the stranger things that's happened to me in the past decade: I became a soccer fan. It's certainly a result my seventeen year old self wasn't expecting.
Now, I didn't write these posts out of some fear that this 'ghost' would come to haunt me during some unforeseen future. It was more out of curiosity- I wanted to better comprehend something I never set out to do and, perhaps, see if there were any lessons or insights to take away from it today.
As I started fitting my various experiences into the framework of the series, I noticed another unexplored truth emerging: that by the end of the same decade, my interest in soccer was declining. I never intended to write about this loss of interest but I recognized the general idea when I saw it. Most sports fans work through a vaguely similar progression at some point. As they get older, their involvement in or passion for sports decreases. The role that sports once filled in life slowly gives way to something else.
That's not to suggest that sports fans walk away from their fandom as soon as they get a driver's license, find a job, or start having kids. Far from it- I still watch games, track results, and generally try to keep up with the latest news. I don't know anyone who was once a big sports fan that no longer keeps an eye on things in some manner. But I acknowledge that the role sports plays for me today is vastly different to what it was in the past.
When I moved to the USA in 1994, I was a six year old with no useful people skills. Playing sports was a great way to compensate for these developing abilities- especially those required to make friends and establish a sense of community.
I managed to cultivate the friend-making skill by the time I graduated from high school. Most of my friends in elementary school were teammates of one kind or another. As the town's various smaller elementary schools combined to form single junior high and high schools, the process repeated itself- I found myself making friends with teammates instead of those I shared classes or activities with.
I recognize today that during this time playing sports became a direct substitute for the still-developing skill of making friends. Having no ability to relate to others on a personal level, I leaned on sports to help make friends until I could do so without sports. This was probably at its peak early in high school when my social circle was notably missing anyone who did not play on the same teams as me.
The change happened, whether by coincidence or not, when I became serious about basketball. Suddenly, the way I approached sports changed. Instead of hanging out before practice like it was after-school 'social club', I showed up early to get some extra practice. Even though the coaches weren't handing out grades, I had the same mentality I applied to AP-level math classes- somehow, I would find a way to get an 'A'.
This meant I lost a bit of common ground with my teammates who were not as driven as I was. Luckily, my social skills were developing and I was starting to understand how to relate across my differences with others. Today, many of my friends from high school are people who I never played sports with at all. The same applies to those I've become friends with since.
The second skill of community building took longer to develop. I think the evidence shows that, although the way I played sports had undergone a transformation by the time I reached college, the way I watched sports remained like it did in second grade. Emotional is the best way to describe my approach- if the team won, I was elated, if the team lost, I was devastated.
The thing about those emotions is how strongly they were linked to a larger concept I had of the community around me. I was happy with a win, for sure, but I was happiest to share that with others equally excited about the victory. That's how being happy in a community works- you walk around with a big grin, laugh off minor trivialities, and appreciate the morning sunlight reflecting off living room windows, right?
And it remains true, in reverse, with the agony of defeat- carrot cake tastes like carrot sticks and the teachers all understand why the Red Sox fans are responding in dull monotones.
I didn't think of it quite that way at the time, of course. But I was definitely aware of how I was participating in some form of community. Growing up in Norwood, a suburb of Boston, meant the specific idea was the 'Boston sports' community. With each Celtics or Bruins win, the joy was shared among us fans like residents of a small town gathering to sing and dance at the annual festival. A loss by the Patriots or Red Sox would bring such a complete gloom that, like at a well-attended funeral, any sign of happiness seemed out of place.
And though it probably sounds silly to an outsider, I can confirm that these sports-fan communities are a very real thing. Like any community, they are defined internally ('we like our team') and externally ('they hate our team'). The first thing I remember finding out about my new college roommate, Charlie, was that he was a New York Yankees fan. 'Oh, that won't be good,' I thought, which sounds preposterous in hindsight given how how little baseball has to do with us being great friends today.
As I settled into my freshman year, it was easy for peers to point and say 'Oh, there's Timmy, the Boston guy' and I would extend my finger right back and go 'Hey, there's Paddy, the New York guy'. The first blog I ever read grew out of this concept- the two authors, both Colby upperclassmen, alternated posts about the Red Sox and the Yankees. There is no other way to describe that blog and its robust comments section as anything but one of the truest communities I will ever be in.
I started to notice changes when I returned home for summers. The closeness I had with some friends, based on shared mutual interest and emotional investment in the outcomes of games, was starting to fray. Part of this was due to changing interests. As it is with all friendships, in some cases the foundation of the relationship shifted to accommodate these changes; in other cases, we slowly grew apart, like branches extending in opposite directions from shared roots.
It's hard to pinpoint a specific moment when I stopped relying on my interest in sports as a community building tool. Those summers I reference might be the point- but those could just as easily be symptoms stemming from a different cause. It could have been a natural progression from my first change of no longer using sports to make friends- over time, making friends in new contexts would have forced me to build my sense of community in those new ways, as well.
If forced to guess one thing, I would go with my general reduction in busyness. Communities are often built around a shared pillar but those pillars are hard to establish when a calendar is fully booked and each moment of time is accounted for weeks in advance. Outside of geography, the number one thing I find in common among the friends I see most often now is busyness- the ones who've busied themselves sometimes seem on the verge of disappearing entirely from my life. And even though it follows as a matter of definition, I think it is worth pointing out that I do see my less busy friends more often.
Now, this busyness thing is no problem on its own. The things that make people busy are often community-building activities in their own right. Family time is an obvious one. A strong workplace often exists as some form of community. Those who regularly share an activity, exercise, or volunteer with the same people are building community. Maybe a better way to put it is that people are busy in a healthy way when they are busy building communities.
The role of sporting-related community is clearly diminished, though. It's not entirely gone; I still play on a basketball team once a week and the fantasy football league I'm in charge of is almost twenty years old. Those activities keep me in touch with some friends I would otherwise lose sight of; with the rest, these serve as one among many topics of discussion.
And yet, on an overall level, I notice the loss of sports as a community building tool. In my last job, for example, I never participated in our office 'March Madness' pool. That's a big change from just a few years when I organized the same among my friends at school. But despite my failure to diligently fill out a bracket and pontificate about who would win the Final Four, I would say that the sense of community I built and shared with the others in that office was a real and significant thing. It's notable to me that I didn't need a shared interest in sports with my colleagues to do it.
But though I experience sports differently today than I did when I was younger, I wouldn't trade the time I spent on it for anything else. I was hopeless socially at age six and didn't get much better for a decade or so. Without participating in or understanding sports, I would have had a really difficult time connecting with my peers while I was growing up.
Today, the skills that sports seemed to help cultivate are flourishing on their own. It leaves open the question of what role remains for something that was once so vital to me.
At this point I'm reminded again of that quote from Slouching Towards Bethlehem. To stay on nodding terms with ourselves is vital, of course, for reasons Didion (who I acknowledge is a tiny bit more accomplished a writer than I) articulated in her essay collection. It's important to recognize those who return unexpectedly, especially if they are uninvited.
But there is this other angle I see when I consider my past self, The Huge Sports Fan. That self is the one who got to know so many people. He might help me connect with people I've yet to meet. Maintaining some basic familiarity with him is vital- without it, those skills I've developed in my more recent years might never get put to use. So though there are some aspects of my past that I might best remain merely on nodding terms with, there are others that I should probably give more attention to. When it comes to my past as a sports fan, perhaps the equivalent of a cup of coffee makes sense, just to catch up and maintain a sense of where I came from.
This season, I didn't watch a single minute of the Champions League. But I'm still looking forward to the final on June 3, regardless of my interest level. It's a match I've watched for the last eleven years, an unimaginable streak to my seventeen year old self. That kid would be equally bewildered by my absence from much of the latest Celtics playoff run. He might not agree that its good enough for me to just keep an eye on the scores or ask other fans what they think. He might cringe when I share what I do know because it's so much less informed than what it was in the past.
One day, he'll figure out that community building is all about accepting differences and working with others to find shared roots. It's important work because unacknowledged roots are the ones that trip us up most unexpectedly. How we find these roots isn't so important- all that matter is finding a way to do it.
