Do you like baseball but you have no team to root for or haven't decided? That may be a good thing.
A few years ago when the Yankees played the Boston Red Sox for the American League Championship series, I asked my analyst which team he was rooting for. I knew from prior conversations that he was a Yankees fan, but wanted to indulge with him in this seemingly irrelevant topic. As it turned out, his answer surprised and enlivened me.
"I really have not yet made up my mind whom to root for," he said. "The Yankees are a great team and all that, but the Red Sox are real fighters. They are very game. It's going to be an exciting series."
The idea that one could choose "important" loyalties in the flash of a moment was stimulating to me. I knew where I had come from. I had tribal and geographical origins and fealty. I was a Jew the son of a Jew, an American and a New Yorker. My entire lifetime, my brother and I had been Yankees fans. How could we be anything else? These things were as much a part of me as my hands and feet.
Yet the thought of being able to switch and simply go with what was happening inside you purely in the moment, is an indescribable freedom and may be a fountain of creativity.
Thinking further along these lines, I was intrigued by how much weight we seem to put into things that deserve no weight at all. It really does not matter which team wins, but yet we invest them all kinds of deep meanings -- even with our identities.
For example, a close friend of mine is a life-long Mets fan, among other reasons, because he identifies with them. They are him, full of potential, long-suffering -- complete with a similar narrative of spectacular melt-downs, (his reversals of fortune, his many marriages) occasional brilliances (his prizes and windfalls).
Loyalty is a great and laudable virtue, but some loyalties are constricting and compulsive. Our automatic loyalties to religion and tribe and even political party are worth investigating. They may not only be silly, but they may be holding us and humanity back from creativity, progress and maturity.
May the best people win!
