This was last weekend…
It’s sunny and mostly clear—mid-sixties on a Sunday morning. The sky is a cloudless, powdery bluish-white. Because yesterday and today have been, and are, a mix of emotions for a lot of different reasons, I’m a little stuck on what to write and feeling wholly inadequate about it. Yesterday morning, I worked on a poem that is a counter-narrative to what I’ve been seeing about the 20th anniversary of 9-11—I didn’t finish because I’m not sure how it goes. Yesterday was also the first Penn State home football game of the year—which, in and of itself, feels in opposition to the gravity of the day and seriousness of our present pandemic moment. I’ve also been plagued by a feeling of cantankerousness—like I used to be a more carefree person and now I’m turning into a grumpy old man full of dissatisfaction and complaint. So… there’s that.
The Game
I don’t think I’ve been to a Penn State game in over two years. I’m pretty sure the last game I attended was Penn State vs. Ohio State in September of 2018. About a week before that game my brother and dad got into an argument. They haven’t spoken since. Also that weekend, my daughter asked if she could move back in with me. It was a stressful weekend for my girlfriend and I—enough so that she broke things off a few days later. When we got back together, I decided I’d rather focus on us than have the distraction of Penn State weekends. I sold the rest of my tickets. In the end, the added focus didn’t work. The following year, I was living in Memphis. I sold what tickets I could and would sometimes watch the games at sports bar. I was one of the only PSU fans in “enemy” territory as they played Memphis in the bowl game that year. Last year, the pandemic year, they played the season, but no fans were permitted at the games.
There was a time in my life when I would rarely miss going to a game. From the time I could walk until well into my adulthood, fall revolved around PSU football and it’s thrilling, if not cult-like, atmosphere. Family events were planned around the season (I didn’t have a fall wedding because it would have been too difficult to schedule). I can remember being at a wedding and my dad and brother were listening to the game and checking the score (my ex and I listened in the car as we drove between the service and the reception). However, for a few years now (maybe six or seven), my interest in PSU football, and sports in general, has been waning. I would still make it a point to go to the big games, but the calculations balancing other interests against devoting a day or weekend to PSU began to tip in favor of other interests. I started to resent how much time I was committing to PSU football. The pastime had passed its time.
I was conflicted about going to yesterday’s game. Given the pandemic and the lack of vaccination or mask requirements, going to a sporting event with 90,000+ other people felt irresponsible. I’m frustrated with our country’s inability to contain this virus. We have more tools to fight this thing back than any other country in the world, and yet through ignorance, misinformation, and political manipulation, we’re failing. I’ve seen several jokes about how this is the worst group project ever. For those of us who have tried to follow the guidance and rules and science, it’s extremely frustrating to feel like we’re being held hostage by our neighbors. The reward for doing our part was supposed to be a return to normalcy—which would include attending an event maskless. Now, having done so, I feel like I’m also part of the problem. To be clear, nobody (except my conscience) is making me feel guilty about this… and I suppose the reason I would like the government or the university or someone in a position of authority to set tougher guidelines (impose a vaccine requirement or cancel the season) is to relieve me of the responsibility of choice. I don’t like feeling conflicted.
I wrote several paragraphs about 9-11 and patriotism. At the game there was a military flyover, and there were tributes, and moments of silence. I’ve spent this past week revisiting and revising those paragraphs – never really happy with the results. I was trying to make sense of the ever-growing connection between patriotism and honoring that day. I was trying to reconcile the 3,000 Americans killed on 9-11 with the hundreds of thousands killed in the twenty years of war since 9-11 (an estimated 70,000 Afghani civilians).
I was also struggling with writing/sharing an unpopular opinion. The truth is, I am not a patriotic person. I like my country, but it’s all I know… and I just don’t view the world in terms of certain people, or cultures, or heritages as being inherently better than others. I know I’m not alone in this way of thinking, but in the midst of the patriotism of the day, I felt pretty alone in a crowd of 100k. On 9-11 in 2020, MarketWatch published a piece on how the US ranks 28th in a study that measures social progress. “In fact, out of 163 countries, only three — the U.S., Brazil and Hungary — have citizens who are worse off now than they were about a decade ago.” There have been lots of articles about how for all of our pride and certainty in American exceptionalism, we rank pretty low in a number of areas. According to people who do these types of rankings (Social Progress Imperative) we have a lot of room for improvement in some very important areas. We rank 91st in access to quality education, 100th in discrimination and violence against minorities, 95th in homicide rate, and 189th in greenhouse gas emissions. It’s not all bad, we’re 1st in quality weighted universities, access to online governance and access to electricity, but even in those areas where we have the most pride (freedom) we rank 64th in political rights and 36th in freedom of expression.
None of what I’ve just written was where I was going in the unfinished paragraphs. I was trying to make sense of cheering war planes that fly overhead, because for me, I try to envision what it must be like to live in a city being attacked by American forces, what it must be like to have bombs dropped throughout the night. The truth is, as tragic as 9-11 was, we’ve managed to keep wars off of our shores. We’ve always taken the fight to someone else, and not all of those wars have been just and not all of them have been about protecting American freedom. We often hear things like losing one American soldier is unacceptable, but seldom talk about the lives we take.
I may try to explore this further at some point. I don’t like to deal in absolutes, and unfortunately what I often see (or perceive to see) on display is a type of absolutism. We have states that are trying to push “patriotic education” by banning their latest boogeyman, critical race theory. We have politicians trying to criminalize criticism. The conversation is fraught with hyperbole in which basically anyone who is critical of our country is labeled as hating our country and an anti-patriot. The fact remains, that for all of our progress and good qualities as a nation, for all of the benefits of this grand experiment in democracy and American ingenuity, this country’s founding and expansion is mired in the destruction of entire cultures and the oppression and enslavement of an entire race.
Cantankerous Me
I’ve been thinking about kindness a lot lately. More specifically, I’ve been trying to figure out what it is, how it’s defined, and if I possess it. When I get in my “moods” about the lack of nuance in the world, when I see more problems than I see beauty, I start to think of myself as an unkind person, or at least as someone lacking the grace to see (and celebrate) the good that exists. This gets complicated for me… mostly because when I think back to a time when I thought I was happy and less weighed down, less worried (and that’s not really the right word) and more celebratory, I think about how I was told by my partner at the time that they loved me but hated living their life with me (or something like that). That has stuck with me ever since – enough so that when I feel myself getting short or frustrated with the world or the people around me, I start to think this person must have been right… maybe I’m miserable…. maybe the problem is with me and my worldview… I start to think that maybe I’m not the peaceful soul I wish (dare I say pretend) to be.
This form of self-flagellation results in a cycle in which I want to be kinder – and, in turn, want the world to be kinder. But the reality is, I spend little time thinking about what true kindness looks like, and even less time putting it into practice. I’m not talking about the absence of doing bad, or thoughtless, or harmful things, but actually being kind and doing good things. I read a tweet the other day from an author talking about what he called kindness block (like writer’s block). He said it’s “where you want to do good in the world and help heal things but you are so overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that needs help that you struggle to know where to begin.” And maybe I have a form of kindness block. In the end, I try to tell myself to lighten up, to not take everything so seriously – but for me, that’s easier said than done. I’m not in search of affirmation, but I wonder about that whole perspective thing – like maybe I need to change my diet of news consumption, or increase some type of joy ratio… and I still find myself tripping over this notion that when I thought I was at my best, I was told I was the worst.
This weekend is another football weekend. I’ve had company at the house (an odd turn of phrase, since it’s their house, I just live here) all week. We have more company coming this weekend, and I have a dog that is sometimes unpredictable (which is giving me a little anxiety). I’ve found myself feeling crowded at times, or annoyed at some pretty small things – you know, if the default setting for the bathroom door is open when unoccupied, then one can reasonably assume that when it’s closed, it’s occupied. But those are grievances for another day and another post.