I don’t have a team in this World Cup. Affiliations, yes, but not a team I have supported in the sport since birthright. Yes, not a choice, but parental affiliation. No specific flag, no bloodline, some childhood loyalty. And yet I’ve spent four weeks pacing my living room as the outcome owes me something.
That’s the part I keep circling back to. Why does a game with zero stake in my actual life leave me drained?
I used to think the answer was control. If I can’t affect the outcome, why let it affect me? Save the emotion for the things I can move.
But that’s not quite right either. I don’t watch football because I think I control it. I watch because someone, somewhere, is doing something extraordinary under pressure they can’t escape. The emotion isn’t wasted on the outcome. It’s the entry fee for witnessing it.
Where I think the real question. Not “do I have control,” but “am I willing to pay attention on purpose, or am I just getting swept along?”
Because there’s a difference between being emotionally invested and being emotionally hijacked. One is a choice. The other just happens to you.
So maybe the discipline isn’t about withholding or diving in. It’s noticing the moment you’re feeling something and asking: did I choose this, or did it choose me?
I still don’t have a team. I just have a rule now. Feel it on purpose, or don’t feel it at all.
And, I am feeling it.
