I don’t imagine it matters much that I hate Kobe Bryant. I am hardly alone in this sentiment and I doubt he spends much time lamenting over the fact that I hate him.
My hatred led me to a conversation with my shadow self. This is the part of us that we would rather not acknowledge. It is the part that holds anger, jealousy, envy; the darker parts of our soul. There is an idea that we need this shadow, that it presents balance, that if we can acknowledge and know it is there, then we can keep it from taking control.
I heard someone once say “In order to see the beauty in God we must intimately know the evil in ourselves.” So what does that have to do with basketball and Kobe Bryant?
As humans we seem to need an outlet to express our anger, our frustration, our sense of helplessness that comes from a lack of control over many, if not most, of the events that define our existence.
Sports can be an outlet for venting this aggression. Through sports we develop competition, rivalry, pride in our team and, conversely, hatred for our rivals. We can participate actively or sit as spectators to watch this shadow proxy war play out night after night. We cheer, we scream, we yell at the TV and occasional this shadow spills over from being a largely symbolic display of aggression to a very real instance of violence.
Though violence is very real in our lives, maybe we receive something very real and tangible through symbolism. Perhaps we can come to a point where we only express aggression through sports or in within the confines our minds.
I was on a plane once from Phoenix to North Carolina. We were stuck on the tarmac, it was hot and the air conditioning was out. I could feel the anger rise in synchronicity with the temperature. As I sat there and stewed in my illogical anger, I could only focus on the man in front of me. He was wearing a mesh trucker hat and I could see the perspiration form on his damp and matted hair. I envisioned myself taking that hat into my hand and beating this senseless with it. I laughed. It was my shadow. Knowing my shadow helped me to keep what was in my mind from spilling over into reality and being escorted from the plane in handcuffs.
I would like to think that there is only love in me. That I could simply come to a place where I can love Kobe Bryant as a fellow human being, even if he were wearing a trucker hat, but I am not there yet. I have a shadow, a very real self that becomes angry, that is jealous, that is envious. Perhaps I will get there someday. Perhaps I need Kobe Bryant’s help to become a better person.
Or perhaps you need Kobe & Co. to lose to the Mavericks in the 2nd round, so that you have something or someone else to focus your attention on? Tyler Perry perhaps? Maybe Chris Brown?
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