Football

“You watch football!?” my psychologist asked.

I was wondering about her incredulism. Then I thought about my own thoughts I’ve had about it. Why do I watch other people I don’t know, somewhere far away, moving a ball from one side of a field to another, and the violence and not just skill that’s included?

In the past I decided it was simply getting lost in something, like a book or movie, getting engaged by the story of it – the competition, the intrigue, the variables, the unknown outcome, people who've perfected some skill facing off against the other, each wanting an opposite outcome… who will govern and how. Not unlike a movie in which there too there's unknown outcome, or at least room for me to get immersed in the story aspect, because otherwise, why am I watching people I don’t know, somewhere else, doing whatever?

But recently watching another football game, with her newly implanted medical incredulism in my head, I grew another perspective: The announcers' excitement, the huge number of fans, the whole apparatus, speaks of millions of people and resources focused on this game, which speaks to my connecting to some degree, or feeling some connection, or being magnetized by he possibility of connection, with others also watching. It’s not just the story line, it’s the human connection.

The hunger, drive and almost need for connection with other people cuts through many different dimensions. Perhaps it’s the same connection that gets tickled with any group activity, including a type whose participant would not value or would in fact devalue. Lynching and violence done by a mob, includes participants who would generally not feel desire or willingness to do such actions, but because with enthusiastic others, the drive for and payoff from human connection can shut off some logical processes and can increase some desire and willingness to connect with others, regardless of for what. The drive to connect trumps and shuts down logic. Perhaps time has honed the human, based on eons of evolution, to value quantity over quality, or to consider quantity a quality over intelligence, at least when trying to survive in the wild. Strength (and value) in numbers.

This concurrently provided me new perspective as to why someone with healthy self value and minimal need for external validation, might still have a hunger, desire or some level of need, of external validation, and a desire to have others with whom to experience things, no matter what those things are. Just a I might join a mob in looting a store, just as I might find interest in watching strangers fight each other over a ball, so too might I feel shortchanged if I - even if all’s well and am enjoying an experience - feel shortchanged and incomplete if alone.

There’s hard wiring in us that will provide more pleasure if it’s a shared experience, and thus will produce a tainted pleasure if without the sharedness ingredient.

This is all to make myself feel better for not feeling whole or wholly good when enjoying things alone and the seemingly innate drive towards finding or creating a “my” people with whom to relate and share experiences.