Faith is hard.
We're taught from a very young age that leaps of faith are difficult because there's no evidence that your efforts will be ultimately rewarded. Faith, as we know it, hinges on belief in the unknown and to a large extent, the unknowable. And while this does seemingly explain the largest and perhaps most powerful exhibition of faith that humanity has, I believe that the accepting that there is a God, or as atheist 12-Steppers would say a Good Orderly Direction, is the exception not the rule to faith. No, I firmly believe that true tests of faith come when you begin to see evidence proving you're right.
Logic dictates that it only takes one exception, one failure, to disprove a theory. Since we don't expect down to be up anytime soon we accept this seemingly harmless piece of logic as truth, never really expending any energy thinking about how big a deal this really is when applied to articles of faith. Think about it, the more evidence you have proving that your faith is well founded, the higher the stakes become. The more you believe, the more you have reason to believe, the bigger fool you'll be when that one exception that disproves your rule comes up and pulls out the superstring that's holding your life together.
This is what being a Chicago sports fan is like.
When you are born into the cult of Cubs, Bears or 'Hawks fandom (and I'm going to assume Sox as well, but someone more versed in that Catechism is going to have to help me out with that one. Also, the Bulls are, well, different. We don't get to complain until at least 2021 thanks to those titles in the early 90s.) the primary article of faith is that of "next year." There's always "next year," we'll get them "next year" and so on. Our teams suck, but we love them, because we know our faith in "next year" will be more than rewarded when "next year" comes up. But, when "next year" is apparently here, switching from our primary article of faith to the one we're supposed to be holding out for is difficult, because, well, once you buy into it finally being "next year," one loss is often all it takes to bring the whole house of cards down on top of you, making you look like an idiot for believing that there could ever be a "next year" to begin with.
The more Da Bears win, the harder it is for me to believe that they will continue to do so. I want to believe, I want so badly to believe that they can win it all, but every time they inch closer to a championship, the harder it is to actually believe that can do it. The harder it is to keep the faith.
Honestly, a lot of the reason I believe in God is because he keeps himself scarce. If God were around all the time, showing His face, doing stuff, it'd be hard for me to continue to believe in His divinity. Because, well, what if one day He fails? What if He doesn't come through? Disappointment sucks and is the natural enemy of faith.
As I said a few years back when the Cubs folded in the NLCS, five outs from the World Series, it's a lot easier to have a team collapse over a thirty day stretch than it is to have one definitive moment when the wheels came off. That's because there's a finite amount of pain your team can cause you. The farther you go without the last of the pain being inflicted, the harder it is to keep the faith, because to doubt is to cushion the blow, to brace yourself for the full brunt of the pain left on your team's ledger.
* * *
Last week's game was a test of my faith. Everywhere I turned there was something or someone trying me, testing to see if they could get me to cash in my chips and admit my folly. I'll admit it, I switched over to "next year is here" mode a while back. I think it was at that bar in The Q on a Monday night when they pulled off that comeback. From that moment on, my life as a Bears fan has been a continual state of hoping and praying that my faith would be rewarded...or at least, not used against me.
Unfortunately, I couldn't watch the game in anything approaching real time. No, I had to see it on a TiVo delay of several hours, which gave my coworkers (mostly Commander Gaffigan and Lieutenant Commander Yellowstoner) an opportunity to tease me. They'd offer fake score updates, assurances that my faith had been misplaced and generally made my life uncomfortable until it finally dawned on them that this really did mean something to me. And, since they had no actual teams of their own...Gaffigan could MAYBE be a Bills fan by birth but the Alouettes make more sense and Yellowstoner...shit, what's out there, the U of Kentucky...they didn't know what it was to have faith, to really believe in something.
At times, I wonder how much cooler my life would be if I were a sports agnostic.
I don't think I've ever actually been out the door at the time I was supposed to be out the door since I started working at The Minuteman, but I couldn't wait any longer, I HAD to get home and watch this game. Gone at 6 and to the gas station to fill up Beto, I kept my Bears hat in the car so no one would see it and automatically console/congratulate me on my team's loss/win. I needed to stop by the store, but couldn't wait any longer so I just bolted home and found Nena finishing up dinner when I walked in the door.
Five minutes later Nena was floored by a migraine. But, since we'd made a date to watch the game and since this team has caused her a few rough Sundays she felt invested in the team, so she tried to suck it up and watch it with me.
By the second quarter she was out cold, the pain having finally knocked her out and onto my shoulder.
OK, so the game was pretty good. Grossman didn't really blow anything. Yes, he did have that fumble, but that was a product of him just not knowing when to take a dive and when not to.
By the middle of the third quarter Nena kept waking up to the sound of me mumbling, "they're gonna lose, they're gonna lose, they're gonna lose." By then, I was wondering if maybe I didn't make a mistake by refusing to hear anything about the game during the day. Maybe, just maybe I would've been better off letting folks rip the band-aid off rather than having it pulled off slowly.
This is where the epiphany about faith kicked in, the more evidence I had that Da Bears might go to the NFC Championship, the harder it was to believe that it might happen.
SHIT!
I yelled, waking up Nena at the end of regulation.
"What, did they lose?" She asked me, still half asleep and in a world of pain.
"No, they're going to overtime."
And then Nena went back to sleep.
Overtime was unbelievably painful. Sitting there, hoping that the D could hang on and shut the bad guys out for another series, leading to...
"FUCK!"
"What, did they lose?" Nena asked again.
"No, they won."
* * *
I believe that Da Bears can win today, the same way I believed that they could win last weekend. But, well, the farther along they get, the harder it is to keep the faith. Sometimes, I wish that they could go back to sucking so I'd know how to feel...
