On Watching Sports

June 21, 2007 | Filed Under Small Talk 

I’m a sports fan. I’m also acutely aware of the fact that the emotions of sport are built upon an illusion. Despite this, I allow myself the joy of sport as well as the depression of sport.

When I was teaching philosophy, I used sports to highlight the way our emotions can deceive us. I mean, let’s be serious. A grown man shouldn’t get depressed for a whole day, not to mention a whole week, because of a game.

But somehow, it happens. It seems that to achieve the full joy of sport, one must be willing to experience at least a little of the sorrow of sport. As a matter of fact, you just can’t experience the ecstasy of routing for a team unless you take the sport more seriously than, in reality, it deserves to be taken.  But in taking it more seriously than it deserves to be taken, it’s easy to carry a disruptive depression back into the real world (which makes it quite different than a piece of fiction or film).

One of those queer little oddities of life.

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