It was the Fourth of July today (yesterday now). I have never cared much about this holiday because I have very complicated feelings about my country, but now, my feelings are not as equivocal.
Let me be clear. I am not a patriot. I have never been a patriot. Much as I have no brand loyalty, I don’t understand why I should be passionate about America just because I was born in it. Let’s face it. I am not someone who cares about teams at all. I used to be a Vikings fan. I enjoyed the games and was happy when they won. But it didn’t ruin my life when they didn’t. I remember the year that the Vikings went 15-1, and the state was in a lather that maybe, just maybe they would win their first Super Bowl.
Instead, they shat the bed in the NFC Championship and lost to the Falcons 30-27. Fun fact: apparently they were the first team to go 15-1 and not make the Super Bowl. Great. Just great. The Vikings have also never won a Super Bowl. That much I still remember.
I was sad that they lost, but I got over it in a day or two. At the beginning of training camp for the next season, which, I may remind you, is roughly six months later, one of the local news stations interviewed a devoted Vikings fan. He was in full gear and makeup, and he was still devastated. He talked about how he couldn’t get over it and how crushed he was that ‘we’ had lost.
My dude.
Brah.
….
Look.
I admit that I am the last one to talk about being a part of a team or team loyalty. It is so not my thing, even when I was very into sports. I get the camaraderie and feeling like you’re part of something, but to be brutally honest, you (the viewer) had nothing to do with the win or lost. You’re not out there training every day. You didn’t throw the ball, catch it, or race into the end zone for a TD.
I do know that having fans that root for you can boost a team’s morale and mood, but I have to believe there’s a ceiling to that effect. In addition, apparently, now with the explosion of sports fantasy leagues, players are receiving death threats by people who have them on their fantasy sports league team if they don’t do well. Which, by the way, don’t do that. That shouldn’t need to be said, but here we are.
I honestly can’t understand feeling that much kinship to something/someone who isn’t an actual person in your life. I used to have a profound crush on Alan Rickman. I mean, I still do, but he’s no longer with us. I talked about him constantly on Twitter, and I was quite open about the fact that I considered him the best actor alive (when he was). I found him after watching the first Harry Potter movie (with a friend. I had no interest in the movie, but she did). I fell in lust with Alan Rickman during that movie, and true to my nature, I became obsessed.
I watched every movie he was in that I could get my hands on. I listened to him read a sonnet. I watched a video of him with a Scottish band called Texas (so hot!), and I bought paraphernalia of Alan Rickman. This became such a thing that when he died, I woke up to Ian sending me an “I’m so sorry” message along with several dozens of condolences on my FB wall and in my Twitter feed. I had always joked that I wanted people to link Alan and me in their minds. It looks like I accomplished that, albeit in a sad way.
I joked wanly with Ian that I felt like a widow or something. The thing is, though, that even though I was shocked and saddened, it wasn’t the same as if someone close to me in my personal life had died. I knew he was a celebrity who I had never met or interacted with, so it was still a once-removed situation.
He’s still my favorite celebrity of all time, by the way.
I mention this because this is how my brain works in general. For whatever reason, I don’t feel kinship with groups–I never have. It’s probably partly because I’m such a weirdo who thinks in ways that are very outside the norm. I have to be careful what I say and do because I don’t want to step too far out of line.
When I used to be into politics, I would go to five or six political sites a day. Then, six months or so later, I would get bored/impatient with a site and move on. Why? Because I could tell who was going to say what, and I was impatient with the lack of growth. This is how I always am, by the way. I get to the end of things and then move on. I explained this to my last therapist, and she looked at me with a stern eye. She took a long minute and replied, “That isn’t a good way to be.”
I knew that! I told her I knew that, but it didn’t change that I was that way. I’ve gotten a bit better at it, but it’s still how I tend to be. To be honest, I am fine with not being a team player. Or rather, with not being patriotic. I don’t see why I should think America is better than other countries simply because I live in it. I have never understood that, and I’m fine with it. Not understanding it, I mean.
Right now, I’m very down on this country. I mean, I never bought into the ideals–or rather, I think they are lovely ideals, but our country has never actually exemplified them. And, honestly, it used to irk me with all the lip service given to them because we are so far from them. Now, I’m just defeated. There is so little hope, and I am not someone who had much of any in the first place.
A decade or so ago, I used to read Letter From Birmingham Jail by Martin Luther King Jr. every Fourth of July. I haven’t done it in quite some time, but I felt the need to pull it out again this year. I will leave you with a link to the letter, and I hope that you can find some inspiration from it as have I.