Reflections on the Team

It was halftime. The Stanford band was on the field, posing and goofing in their usual way and we were booing and screaming in ours. Then a Cal fan, bolder than the rest, began to climb the chain link fence that separated the fans from the field. We laughed as he evaded the security guards. We cheered as he swung over the top of the fence. We screamed as he hit the field and ran, flat out, towards the Stanford mascot, a ridiculous tree that bopped and weaved with no sense of style or rhythm. Every Cal fan in the world hated that tree. As he ran, we noticed he was carrying something in his hand. We couldn’t see it clearly but whatever it was, you knew it was going to be good. He was almost there now. A wild hysteria had burst across the crowd. He raised his hand and for the first time we saw what he was holding.

It was a baseball bat.

The cheer died in my throat. I watched, in shock, as he raised his bat and brought it down again and again. Who knows who was inside that costume? Boy, girl? Strong, frail? Maybe it was the sweetest kid at Stanford. The mascot was on the ground now and the Stanford band was trying to pull the assailant off as he struggled for one last swing. I turned to my fellow Cal fans, expecting to see the same shock and horror I knew was on my face. They were still cheering. My brothers in blue and gold, the strangers I had felt so close to a moment before, were actually cheering.

I’m not making this up. This really happened.

At some point in life we choose sides. We pick our allegiances like options on a car or dishes at a restaurant. There is no limit to the number of teams you can join. I am a man, a Jew, an American, a Cal Fan, etc. Pick a team and suddenly, you are connected with hundreds, thousands or even millions of people and they are connected to you. You belong. It’s a powerful feeling. When soldiers in the field are asked what is really motivating them to risk their lives, the answer isn’t usually country or ideals, it’s the guy in the trench next to him. It’s the unit, the platoon, and the team.

And of course, our teams are special. They are “The Chosen People”, imbued with manifest destiny and blessed by God. (One is forced to speculate, however, on the value of God’s blessing when, if you listen to us, he bestows it on Christians, Jews, Muslims and both teams before the super bowl.) Joining a team makes us part of something special. The problem is, the moment you define what you are, you also define what you are not.

Racism, Sexism, Anti-Semitism, Homophobia and a thousand other examples of man’s inhumanity to man are inextricably tied to our allegiances and associations. After all, it is a basic human imperative to look out for your own first and everyone else second. In fact, the presence of an opposition can be a very strong motivator. Hitler united a broken and defeated German people by manufacturing an enemy out of the Jews. Ethnic cleansing in Bosnia or Rwanda, have at their heart the certain knowledge that one group is good and the other evil, and that for one to survive the other must be destroyed.


So, where does it come from, this need to divide up the world into us and them, right and wrong, friend and foe?

I used to believe that we did this because it was the only way we could comprehend the world around us. Our minds simply can’t contemplate, trillions of stars or billions of years, or even millions of people. There are almost six billion people on this planet, each with their own, history, aspirations, fears, and loves but to think of every individual is beyond our capability. We can think of India, but not every Indian. We can think of Christianity but not each Christian. And so we divide up the world, making decisions along the way about the character of each of our divisions and since everyone is doing this, a world of allegiances is formed.

But I have come to believe that there is another reason, a deeper reason. A need, which emerges from the moment of our birth and haunts many of us until the day we die.

It’s not just that we don’t know the world. It’s that we don’t know ourselves. We are looking for more than a team. We are looking for a reflection. After all, how can you know who you are without a mirror?

When you are born, you know almost nothing about the world and you look to your surroundings, your parents, siblings and friends to define who you will become. Without even realizing it you adopt a thousand details of behavior, how to eat, walk, speak, humor, manners, tastes, God. We are sponges for behavior, constantly adopting and adapting new modes of speech, dress, and action. Most of us don’t walk about with a constant identity, an ideal self that never changes from situation to situation. We are, in fact, constantly shifting, blending in with current circumstances.

So, who are we really? What is the truth hiding beneath the shifting fog of our artifice? Maybe we don’t know. Maybe we can never really know. And so we reach out to our reflections in the world, those others of our perceived kind, and we know our identity through them. I am a man, a Jew, an American, a Cal Fan. I know how to dress, speak, act properly within those groups and when Cal wins, I win and when the Jews loose, I loose. Attack my team and you attack me.

But it is important to remember that all of us are, for the most part, the product of our circumstances. We have all adapted to the world we find ourselves in. The odds are, had we been born in Nazi Germany, Stalin’s Russia, or the Taliban’s Afghanistan, we would not have fought against the conception of the world that we were presented with. We would have lived, worshiped, fought and hated along with everyone else. There are occasionally exceptional people who rise above their surroundings and fight against the common will, but those people appear far to infrequently and they rarely survive for long.

This “us and them” view of the world seems so natural we hardly ever think to question it, but question it we must.

The world today teeters on the brink of a culture war. Each day we hear of another death, another bomb, another tragedy. Each day our world seems to shrink and hope disintegrates into the mist.

So, as we stare at the stranger on the other side of field, the enemy whose very existence is a threat to ours, we must remember that he too is simply a reflection of his environment. He is a human being, just like us, struggling to find his way through a difficult world. We might not understand his motivations but he does have them. Christians and Muslims. Rich and Poor. Black and White. Republican and Democrat. The truth is they have far more in common than we care to admit.

Maybe if we can learn to focus on our similarities rather than our differences we can find our way onto a much greater team. And if there is God, and if he were to single out one team for his blessing, let us hope it would be this one.

The human race.

Because the truth is, we are all members whether we like it or not. All the other teams are just the illusions of our limited imaginations.

So, when I am filled with anger at the player on the other side. I try to remember that halftime, so long ago, when I watched one of my brothers attack one of theirs and all I can think is, “that could have been me, dressed in that ridiculous costume that day”. After all, I applied to Stanford. I just didn’t get in.