The Home Team w/comments by Sideways

I don’t cheer for the home team. I haven’t for a long time. When I was a boy I rooted for the teams I was expected to – the Packers – Green and Gold gods to be bowed down to. But something turned for me – it all seemed so arbitrary, so without thought. You happen to be born in a certain place, to a particular set of people and because of that happenstance you are a member of the tribe. The tribe that says we are the best, we are the chosen.

The logic of it embarrassed me. Really?,  I wanted to ask. Really?   What if you had been born one hundred miles away? The more I thought about it the crazier it seemed.  I wanted to meet the other team. Then another and another. 

Some – or most – of any tribe are needed to root for the home team. Without them, I think stadiums would be empty as importing loyalty is harder than growing your own. Call us brainwashed robots or not, this mindless adherence might seem arbitrary but it is necessary to preserve culture and customs. But then we have to decide what is really worth preserving and why we are afraid of change.

Do we need stadiums? Do we need the Bread and Circuses?  But you hit the right spot – what is worth preserving. It seems it is often the wrong things – the superficial things that get preserved until a culture becomes a thin shell of its former self.

Recently I had a discussion with a friend about being attracted to what my friend D calls “the other”.  It’s been, if not an issue then a theme, a thread I’ve tugged at trying to understand.  I thought that perhaps my friend S could help me. I’m white – she’s, of course, not. Except I’ve come to the conclusion that it really doesn’t have much to do with appearance but more with character – more with the heart, one that hasn’t been completely  blinded by the chance of culture.

I don’t have that much of an insight on why some seek out the other. I’ve imagined it’s a desire for life to be a little more complicated, stepping away from cookie cutters and boxes and all those clichés we feel trapped in everyday. Perhaps it’s a desire to control your own destiny. I do understand why we don’t seek out the other. When the world is spinning - a collision of culture, language, morals, even color - you have to hold on to something. Is there anything wrong with that? Except it’s mostly a losing battle.

Yes, Sideways, I think that is right – but I would substitute rich for complicated.  I am currently writing a story where one character tells another that believing we are holding onto something is simply how we get through the day.

I have had strong friendships with Spanish men, Native Americans, Asians, but really it’s been women. They have let me in easily and deeply. With men there are other obstacles – power maybe. Maybe I try harder with women. Maybe I am more myself with women.

Don’t women only give half the story?

No, they are at least 75% of the story.

Or maybe I wanted to prove something to myself and to them. Prove that if you open the heart the rest of it comes along. It doesn’t matter if the heart is from Argentina or Iran or Vietnam or India, or even the high Hopi mesas of northern Arizona. If you stay open to the hum, it can come from anywhere. Be grateful when it does.