A Lesson in Suffering, Faith, and Patience

through the prism of loving and hating Manchester United, plus a poem.

To be a fan of a sports team is a lesson in suffering. When I first started supporting Manchester United in 2006 or so, I didn’t realize I was waving the flag for, historically, England’s most successful club and, contemporaneously, their most dominant.

Since the early 90s, the red team from Manchester (the color is an important distinction) climbed to the top of the mountain a total of 13 times — vastly more than any of their competitors. Some of the world’s biggest stars of the sport were playing in England at the time, and the league was extremely competitive, which made United’s repeated successes all the more satisfying.

The club I had chosen was Wayne Rooney’s and Cristiano Ronaldo’s. It was a team of stepovers, bicycle kicks, and last-minute thrills. Anything less than a championship was considered a failure. Losing, however, was made less bitter by the assumption, the near guarantee, that the dip in form was only temporary; that the academy would keep churning out world-beaters and the best footballers in Europe would fall over themselves to join the legendary club in the North of England, and trophies would be held aloft again.

Then came 2013, Sir Alex Ferguson, the greatest manager football has ever seen, retired at the end of one last title-winning season. With the boss gone, the club’s ownership pursued profit over performance, and the proceeding years could be summarized as an ever-descending procession of peaks and valleys.

Today, twelve years and seven managers on, Manchester United are as far away from the highest rungs of professional football as I — and most people living — have seen them.

The sobering reality of mediocrity is accompanied by the realization that the overwhelming majority of professional sports teams and athletes spend their existence and careers in this category. No one actually thought Leicester City would win the Premier League Title in 2016 (not even the fan who won £76,000 on a 5000 to 1 bet), but even before that, the Foxes enjoyed the rarified air of sports teams across the globe.

It took over a century for the Chicago Cubs to win their third World Series title after winning two in quick succession in 1907 and 1908, so droughts aren’t to be taken lightly. The Cubbies, despite their miserable one hundred years, remained one of the most popular franchises in America due to a second virtue we can learn from the life of a fan — faith.

Not faith in the owners, not faith in the management or the players, but faith in a culture, in an idea — faith in the idea that all of your suffering will one day be worth it.

Of course, to have faith is to be willing to endure an interminable length of time waiting for success — and there will be opportunities to jump ship, to hitch your wagon to another horse, but where’s the romance in that?

To have faith is to have patience, and that is something of which we could all be dealt an extra dose. How easy it is to fidget and falter at the weight of delayed gratitude, but those of us who remain committed will reap the greatest rewards. I’m earning my stripes as a supporter in the doldrums of United’s persistent disappointment. When the time comes, with sighs and exasperation, I’ll have purchased the coveted right to say, “I remember when…”

In life, not just sport, to get to where we so desperately desire, we have to have the patience and faith to believe that our suffering will end and that glory will be ours again.

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patience

I wait for a thought to come to my head
I wait for it to be good
sometimes I wait for a long time

I wait for my amp to warm up
I wait for the needle to drop
I wait for my turn at the park

I wait at the red light and I wait at the DMV
I wait on the phone
sometimes I don't know why

we wait for the water to boil
and the coffee to drip
and the bread to bake
and the cookies and bagels
and cakes and pies 
and bread to bake

we wait for the heat to kick on
for the AC to blow
and the sun to go down

we wait for the rain
and the flowers to bloom
we wait for the plans to fruit

true love waits

we waited for romance
and first kisses and first loves
we waited for college degrees

and success
and success
and success

we wait for tariffs to work
and hostages to come home
and all the while we're still waiting for things to make sense

we wait for the phone to ring
for the mail to arrive
and for our stocks to vest, whatever that means

we wait for company to come
we wait to be left alone
and we wait with 
heads on pillows 
for a good dream
and good sleep 

we wait for vacations
and to fill the tank with gas
we wait for the wave to break and the tide to come in

we wait for a bite on the line
and we wait for signs of life
and we wait in pained silence to hear another heartbeat

we wait and we wait
until the waiting is mastered
and the buddha and christ
and the heat of the universe
are put to shame

so that even grim death
enraptured by our virtue
captivated by our conviction
is contented
and waiting in the wings

To a better next week,

Cheers,

~FDA