Divorcing a Sports Team:
Learning to Master Fan Yoga
By Coach Cary Bayer
"Struggling or at rest,
Nothing is won or lost.
I have forsaken the joy of winning
And the sorrow of losing.
And I am happy."
--Ashtavakra Gita 13:6
I'm getting a divorce from the New York Mets. I've been married to my wife for 21 years, but to the Mets for more than double that. In the '60s, as a small boy, I watched a stadium being built five minutes from my home; it would house the National League's new baseball team. In their infancy, the mitts of the Mets couldn't catch a cold, let alone a ball, but they were lovable.
I've been loyal to the Mets through thick and much thin, and I've never had an affair with another baseball team. So why now a divorce? Because a man's love of a sports team can drive him to drink-fortunately, that's not my problem; it can drive him to a pact with the Devil (Damn Yankees); thank God, not my problem either; it can also make him unbearably sad and frustrated. I know this place. When you love, it hurts to see your beloved in pain.
In the last three weeks of the 2007 season, the Mets suffered a freefall that was the greatest collapse in baseball history, plummeting out of first place into oblivion, like the Titanic that's hit some unforeseen iceberg and is letting in water at record speed.
In one of those games, I witnessed a very painful loss that hurt more than it's healthy to hurt. So it's time for divorce. That doesn't mean I don't love them anymore-it means I can't live with them anymore. I don't have to divvy up Mets yearbooks and memorabilia. It's not like I'll have visitation rights to games every other weekend. I'm choosing to watch, enjoy and love them-but from a distance. As the Buddha said,
"Losing, one lies down in pain.
The calmed lie down with ease,
Having set winning and losing aside."
--Dhammapada
I know how challenging it is to kick a lifetime attachment to a sports team. And attachments to the things you've been hooked on for the longest time, die slower.
If the Mets had made the playoffs, I'd have looked forward to watching them from the silence of my higher Self. That's the place in me that witnesses life's play of ups and downs. These are the games I would have enjoyed the most. There's an important reason for that: I'd have had no attachment to the outcome. I'd still be a fan, but when my higher Self is awake, I'm a fan in the zone.
A wise yogi once said, "Love without attachment is light." I can love them without being attached to them. I can see the light at the end of the season.
And so, as this piece reaches its ninth inning, I turn to Zen Master Kenzo Awa, an archer, who said to Eugen Herrigel, author of Zen in the Art of Archery (as reported in this classic book on sports), "You must free yourself from the buffetings of pleasure and pain, and learn to rise above them in easy equanimity, to rejoice as though not you but another had shot well. This, too, you must practice unceasingly-you cannot conceive how important it is."
Mastering Fan Yoga depends on it.
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Cary Bayer is a Life Coach with a national private practice from Florida (954-788-3380) and New York State (845-679-5526). You can visit him on the web at www.carybayer.com or email him at successaerobics@aol.com
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