It Wasn't a Bracket Buster but Rather a Heart Buster

Last night was a tough night for me emotionally. Sports. We all love them in some aspect or another. So what is it about sports that invoke such emotions from us?

Last night I was angry that Syracuse lost in the sweet 16. If you don’t know anything about college basketball, Syracuse could have won the championship this year. We had star talent, a hall of fame coach, and an amazing season. But we lost 3 games before the big game. And I’m sad to say that I was angry because of that loss. It doesn’t make sense to me why I was so emotionally tied to a team that I don’t give anything to and that doesn’t give anything to me but entertainment.  I didn’t help this team win any of their games. I didn’t pay to cheer them on outside of my television. I didn’t coach or teach any of them for any period of time. Hell, these players don’t even know or care that I exist but yet I lied in bed thinking, I can’t believe they lost, why did we play so bad, why did I just use the word we in that last question? As if I’m part of their team. What an awful game.

I watch and I cheer and yell but I can just as easily turn around and cheer for the other team without blinking an eye. Now I’m not talking about being a band wagon fan but I’m talking about realizing how vain it is to root so emotionally for a team that it ruins your night or causes relationships that you have in your life to be strained.

So if someone can turn around and start cheering for a team that they cheered against the night before, it only reasons that what your cheering for doesn’t really matter and isn’t really life. It’s all fake. It’s all a game. It doesn’t matter. And it’s not real life.

Sports are what they are: entertainment and I don’t want to take the emotions out of a big win or a big loss. Just like I don’t want to take the emotions out of movies that change peoples’ lives, even though they are not real and all parts are played by actors. But if you take a step back for a second and look at yourself, how you appear to others when you get so infuriated that you make people around think you have no self control then there’s a problem.

So last night I realized as I lay in bed that I can’t control who wins or who loses. I can’t control how much practice someone puts into a game. I can’t control or help how good the teams are that we’re playing. One thing I do have control over is how many times I write Hentri, my sponsor child. I can control how many times I tell my parents I love them. I can control how often I decide to do go out of my way to love people. I can control how many times I decide to lust, or get angry, or hate. So in the words of Roger Trimble “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it.” So I’m going to start caring more about the things in my life that I can control and stop caring about the things in life that I can’t trust. I can always trust God because he is trustworthy. And he never fails unlike Syracuse basketball…which save 2003 always fails. Love. War.


Things to think about
-giving money to someone that needs it more than you
-quitting your job and just going
-unlimited demand with limited supply equals long waiting lines


Things to read
-Maddox