The whole point of being a fan is to be ‘irrational’. Not crazy-craz stuff, just ‘not’ so rational. The whole rest of the day we are either tending to our families or working at a job or doing tasks that need to get done and stuff like that. Rational, rational, rational.
After a while, our brains and bodies rebel. We want to NOT be so sensible for a while. So we throw our egos and our personal identity into some team that holds some kind of meaning for us. And we ‘think’ with our hearts more than our heads. And that is the whole point of doing this kind of thing.
Yes, we can put on our sensible and analytical minds and scrutinize every part of the games and players and coaches and refs if we want. That’s fun too. But that’s not what most matters to us. What matters is the brother-and-sisterhood we have with those whose hearts are like ours.
And when ‘Our Team’ wins... then WE win. We feel blessed and fortified by those Forces-Beyond-Our-Control that conspired to reward our chosen fanaticism at any given moment. Our egos get stroked and we stick our chests out more... emboldened by our good fortune. We stand tall and smile more.
Sometimes we have to dial things back a bit when we start to stray too far into the emotional zones of too-high or too-low... but it is our passion for a team that drives this whole thing.
Sports without passion and personal investment is just doing exercise. Important to do so, yes. But certainly nothing that lifts our spirits and brings a community of people together.
Some of the best times of our lives is through being a fan. And we can all use more of these kinds of times to counter all the bad ones.
