Contentment

If you're thinking "Oh, his team lost and he's gonna try to cover his displeasure by ranting about contentment" then you would be wrong. I never entertained any fantasies that Team USA would "Win the Cup". No serious soccer fan would. But I have been (more or less) following the progress of the remaining teams.

Unlike our "World Series" of baseball, the World Cup is actually something that the planet at large takes an interest in (and so it deserves the title). It may make some people angry, but the World Cup is much more "Super" than any "Super Bowl" could ever hope to be. Despite this worldwide consensus of enthusiasm (which reaches an apex with the tournament once every four years) there still exists a great deal of discontentedness.

Look, for example, as some results of this poll: http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Soccer/WorldCup/News/2006/06/26/1654621-ap.html


Thats our only choices? Instead of "Bad" our fourth option is "Abysmal"? The "ca" in the URL stands for "Canada" - I didn't even know that the Canadians were paying attention (I mean, haven't they all been busy watching the Stanley Cup? :-)

I wouldn't have said that the officiating has been "abysmal" but it has been "interesting". Check this out: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5511358
(World Cup Red Card Record passed - and there were still 12 games left to play!)

Don't let your eyes glaze over yet - for those that don't realize it, the red card is very important for at least two reasons: the player "carded" is ejected from the game leaving his team to play minus one man for the remainder of the game AND when red carded, that player is also out for any of his team's other tournament games. The team can field a full squad in future games but that particular player is barred for the remainder of the tournament. So a red card becomes a huge penalty against a team and against the player.

But I'm digressing... I want to talk about contentment. It is my honest opinion that the great amount of discontentment that is so easy to find and the current "victim culture" (with it's abdication of personal responsibility) are intrinsically connected.

Think about it like this; If I'm not happy with my lot in life, I have two choices. I can take responsibility for my situation and try to do something to change it or I can choose to be a "victim" and blame somebody else. If somebody else gets blamed (my boss, God, an old lover, the government, whatever) then I am released from responsibility for my own actions and, by extension, the consequences of those actions. This frees me up to be quite lazy (or worse).

The reason that I feel that discontentment and the "victim culture" are so tied together is for one reason. It is a practical impossibility to dwell on contentment (counting your blessings) and actively pursue the life of a "victim". If you don't believe me then try this experiment: Try to get yourself all mad at something somebody did to you (or some lousy situation) and then try to count your blessings at the same time. It just won't work. Why? Because these involve two diametrically opposed thought processes - gratitude and resentment. Just owing to human nature, somebody is gonna read this and think "oh, I can do that" - okay wiseguy go ahead - try it! (and may you be overwhelmed by your blessings!)