JBot Mania

I’ve posted before about how I’m not the most avid sports fan. Yet, even I can get disappointed. I can look at Barry Bonds and be disgusted, but not disappointed. I can look at ALL of the doping in baseball, bicycling (the list goes on) and think it is a disgrace to the foundation of sports, but not feel personally let down. I relegate these people, these incidents into some outside world—a world that I can analyze and postulate about without feeling. But today—today I’m having trouble looking past this.

There are some people you count on, subconsciously or not. You say “That Bill Belichick is such a stick in the mud”, and you count on him to be that way. You don’t mind because he’s apparently doing great things with his team. He apparently knows how to get it done. He apparently knows about hard work and discipline. Apparently you were wrong.

What I find so ridiculous is that, like I said, I’m not an avid sports fan and yet here I am, affected. Here I am disbelieving that I can still be shocked by the failings of great people.

I have, for some time, had NO faith in the good of humanity, but in a way where I accept it as a fact, not as a personal condemnation. I look at accepting it as finally giving up on all of the ideals that someone somewhere set forth for humanity. Standards that no one is built to achieve.

In general, I’m talking about religious expectations. I look at religious texts as someone somewhere deciding what would be ideal to have in a human being. Whether from their own mind or from a vision or from God Itself, it never seems to be about whether it’s possible and thereby whether it’s even right to require, just whether it would be nice to have.

I could say “Fine, nice-to-have. I get it. Put it on some vague list somewhere and get to it later.” But with these kinds of goals, you can’t even do that. Just having that list is a condemnation whether you strive to achieve what’s on it or not. The simple fact becomes that you’re not achieving it. Sounds a bit like… what’s that word… guilt.

I look around now and I see so many catastrophic failures when it comes to so many of these basic principles. Steadfast “family values” proponents crashing and burning in such spectacular fashion that it makes me wonder if we’re asking too much. A man may not lie with another man. A man may not lie with another man’s wife. A man cannot seek an advantage through dishonest means.

We ask these things of humanity and yet, we consistently fail. Have we ever wondered if we’re simply not built to be that way, if we were never intended such piousness. Maybe this pursuit is what is, in fact, tearing us apart. Maybe it is this pursuit that is driving us to fail so completely.

I’ve spent quite a long time with someone who has repeatedly said “I won’t change who I am” and in reality, it’s that he can’t. And just the same, I can’t either. No one can. Try spending a day being who you are not and you’ll wake up tired, dead tired. So maybe Bill Belichick and Floyd Landis, Larry Craig and Matt Foley; maybe they cannot be anything but human. Maybe we ask too much? Maybe when we’re asking these people not to cheat and to, for some, not be gay, we’re really asking them not to be basic human beings. I don’t think you can ask anyone to do that.

Either way, I’m still disappointed in Belichick because I want to be proven wrong. I want there to be some decency that I can depend on. In reality, it’s the only thing that keeps us safe in our homes. I’m thinking, though, that it might be more realistic to simply lock my door when I am home and accept that everyone has something lurking beneath.