Future Or No Future
"I can admit when I'm wrong but"
You say this to yourself and you lie. You can't. You've done it a few times but you don't actually believe it. You convince yourself that time will in fact prove you right and that's why you always end with "but."
But, herein lies the rub. You're just wrong. Constantly. So am I. The only part that really matters is who you're wrong to.
You have to be wrong to your boss and you have to be right to your kids. The grey area lies within your friends and your tastes. I once had a journalism professor, now a friend, that chastised me for spelling "grey" that way. "You aren't from England," he said. But I like it better with an E, it feels more smooth. I was wrong in school, but I'm not now.
Everyone in every sport is wrong at the end of the season except for the champion. This is the case for players and teams that are both contending and rebuilding. There are no probable outcomes. The media will tell you about averages and projections and percentages but the absolute truth of competition is that everything either happens or it doesn't. There is a winner and a loser. But if that call went the other way. It didn't. You lost.
So why does this matter?
You might simply want your team to win, which, of course. You might choose to be more thoughtful about athletes and quote Teddy Roosevelt. "It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood."
I am here to tell you that it is okay and that it doesn't matter. The man in the arena is wrong too. You make the same mistake every year by rooting for the New York Jets but you aren't actually rooting for the Jets at all, you're rooting for a sense of camaraderie with those around you or a chosen group of like-minded others. This is something Vonnegut discussed in Cat's Cradle regarding "Hoosiers" and it's also part of the famous Jerry Seinfeld bit, "You're actually rooting for the clothes." I don't want to belabor this point too much, this is all sort of obvious, but allow me to take one more step.
You draw your line somewhere and you stick your flag in the ground. I gave up on the Cleveland Browns after 30 years of fandom when they signed Deshaun Watson for $230 million after 22 lawsuits were filed against him for sexual misconduct. This does not make me a beacon of morality, it just illustrates where my line was with the Browns. I still sing along to David Bowie. I still dance to James Brown at weddings even though I know he bashed Tammi Terrell's head into the wall before she died of brain cancer. I still listen to Tammi Terrell.
You drafted Aaron Rodgers in fantasy football. You pre-obligated yourself to root for someone who allegedly said that Sandy Hook never happened and those shot-dead children never existed. Is there duty-free fandom? To whom do you pay the tax on yourself? Zach Bryan is the number one Billboard artist and also a country singer that reportedly attempted to pay $12 million to keep his ex-partner quiet regarding his abuse. It's all shit.
Everyone separates and everyone is wrong. I am not here to be your lighthouse. You have to find your own way. In the meantime, however, you do have an opportunity. You can gift yourself the ability to take your body apart and hold your organs up to the light. Examine them. Feel what you feel but then ask why. Camus said, "in psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth." That's why you're wrong. There is no right. But (but) if you try, you can find something close to clarity in your heart. It sits there, comfortable, assured. You don't exactly know it, but you can feel it. You enjoy it. And you're wrong. And it's okay. It has to be. There is no way to be alive without the evil that surrounds you, you can only do your best to not let it consume you.
-Michael Campana