I know so little about the world around me. Seriously, I know almost nothing.
Although I learn more and more the longer I live, filling my brain with facts and ideas, along with my children’s soccer schedules and to-dos at work, I’ve also come to realize that the world is never-endingly vast and complex, and it is literally filled to the brim with things I don’t know.
If there were a list of things I don’t know, it would probably grow by miles every day, just like the universe is constantly expanding, or so they say. On the list would be so many things I know I don’t know, like the number of grains of sand on earth, but that part of the list would be dwarfed by the part containing all the stuff I’m not even aware of, like pretty much everything outside the earth’s atmosphere beyond the basics of stars and planets and space, meaning all the stuff I don’t even know that I don’t know.
That being said, I’ve learned a bit over time about how to navigate life given how little I know, how to prioritize what’s most important, how to apply judgment and restraint, how to make it through difficult circumstances. I think that’s what we call wisdom, but even that I’m not sure of.
When questions about life become very personal though, when questions are about what life means to me rather than what I know about it, I become much more confident in my responses. Because I do know what is meaningful to me and what isn’t, and my sense of this has actually grown over the years.
Family, friendship, music, creativity, the golden rule and of course delicious food all mean so much to me. They fill my heart with warmth and good feeling. They make me feel that life is beautiful and profound.
These are all general things though, and I think most people would agree, although probably not all, that they are quite meaningful. But when you go deeper it can get a bit confusing. Let’s take family for example, and in this case I’m referring to a specific subset of family which has a meaning all its own, the extended family. This includes our aunts and uncles and cousins and other distant relatives. We all love our family, right? I think so, although many people don’t have great extended family relationships. And those of us that do, know that there can be a lot of complexity there. These relationships ebb and flow, and you’ll find yourself closer to some than to others. And even though we generally support and love one another in an extended family, there are times when these same people, including ourselves, hurt or disappoint their loved ones.
What I’m trying to say here is that what extended family means to me might be very different than what it means to you. What my extended family means to me today might also be rather different than what it means to me tomorrow.
Extended family has a fluid meaning then, and it depends on so many things. It depends on who you are and the situation you’re in and probably dozens of other factors too, if not more.
And so it goes with the meaning of all things. It’s relative. It’s based on your perspective. There’s no center to it. What something means and how meaningful it is to you depends on what your relationship to it is, and these relationships are always in flux. They can shift so rapidly and transform over time and space.
And this brings us to the Buffalo Bills, who I have an intense emotional relationship with to say the least. Sports didn’t even make my list above of general things that fill my life with meaning, and yet when it comes to the Bills there’s something deep within me, very deep, that truly cares for this team. I’m filled with joy when they win and I’m tormented when they lose. I’m from Buffalo, so that’s part of it. But I don’t feel this way about the Sabres or any other team on the planet for that matter. The Bills are my team, and I love them.
This is not to say I understand this love, because I don’t. Stepping back further I don’t even get what it is about this game in which we try to move the ball down the field and over the goal line while the other team fights ferociously to bring us down that stirs our collective hearts so powerfully. But it doesn’t matter, does it? We love what we love and that’s where we find meaning.
I grew up playing football with friends in the street. That’s just what we did come fall. We’d play until sunset, only pausing when cars passed by, imagining ourselves catching last minute toe-tap touchdown passes like our heroes on the Bills, our feet touching down just inside the curb as we leaned to make the grab and landed on the patch of grass before the sidewalk. But even those street football games came together by complete happenstance when you look at the big picture. I was born in the right place at the right time I guess. I lived in a country where football was a thing. It had been invented in the late 1800s and over the next century grew into a national pastime. If I’d lived in another country where they loved other sports, like cricket or soccer or others I’ve never even heard of, I’d have no relationship with football and certainly not with the Buffalo Bills. Growing up in Buffalo, in America, was a huge factor in why my love is so strong.
What a topsy turvy ride it’s been. When I was young I was a die hard Bills fan that followed every move they made. My fall and winter Sundays were devoted to their games. And the team was amazing, kind of like they are today. They made it to four straight Super Bowls, an unbelievable achievement. But they also lost every one, and this tore me apart on the inside, just as it did for all Buffalonians. Those four losses were during my four high school years, and honestly I still feel traumatized, as much as sports fanhood can traumatize you. I was so emotionally drained by the time I graduated that I took a break from watching the Bills, and this ended up lasting about a decade. My response to the devastation I felt after the consecutive Super Bowl losses was deciding I could no longer let my emotions be driven by whether they won or lost, so I withdrew. I told myself I needed to anchor my feelings to other things, things that weren’t dependent on the final score of a game. I also told myself that the Bills didn’t really mean all that much to me, that I didn’t have to care as much as I did. That worked for a while, but my heart was never really convinced. The love remained, as strong as ever, just suppressed and waiting.
My son is ten years old now and a huge fan. Josh Allen is transcendent and could very well lead us to the Super Bowl this year, which would be our first time back since my high school days. All of my feelings have risen again and are at the surface. Last year when we lost to the Chiefs in the playoffs I cried and couldn’t sleep well for days. I’m excited beyond belief and also a nervous wreck.
I think of our first Super Bowl loss from time to time, especially as we get closer to the playoffs. It haunts me still. But my feelings, Buffalo’s feelings, are just one side of it, as that same game resonated very differently with others.
When I arrived at college a few years after that loss to the Giants, I became fast friends with my roommate Matt. He’s a wonderful human being and is still a dear friend of mine who I see every year, even though we live on opposite sides of the country. He grew up just outside New York City while I grew up in Buffalo, so we were both born and raised in New York State. But he was a Giants fan and I loved the Bills. Soon after we met I realized in an instant how that Super Bowl affected us in completely different ways. It came down to the last play of the game and the Bills were down one. We lined up for a field goal to win it all but the kick famously went wide right as time expired. I was watching at my friend’s house in his basement with about ten of my classmates. We were holding hands in a semi-circle as the ball sailed through the air and we lost the game. It was devastating to me then and in a way it still is. Something in me desperately wants the Bills to be world champions. There’s a hole in my heart that I honestly think will be filled if and when they win it all one day. But to Matt that same missed field goal was a moment filled with unbelievable joy, the kind that gets you jumping up and down and pumping your fists and screaming “YEAH!” at the top of your lungs as you hug everyone around you.
It was the same game, the same ball, the same kick, and we were both spectators. But what it meant was entirely different to us. It was terrible for me and amazing for him. It’s crazy how the world works like that.
Meaning is relative with almost everything. I absolutely love music and it brings me so much pleasure when I listen to it or play it. The sounds that emanate from the vibrating strings of my guitar fill my heart with powerful emotions. When the sounds are sequenced in such a way I am overcome with feelings that are deep and profound. The sounds help me make sense of the world. It’s impossible to describe and yet we all have things in our lives that make us feel this way.
There are plenty of people I know, plenty that I’m very close to, that don’t feel nearly the same way about music. Maybe they’re into gaming, or beer, or gardening, or whatever. They’re into something else and they’re not into music as much and it’s harder to relate with them about the details of my passion. We just can’t connect about what these things mean to us because we don’t share the same level of interest.
At work I find myself thinking similar thoughts. I develop real estate, and many of the projects I do are in urban neighborhoods that have seen better days. We oftentimes restore old, deteriorating buildings, bringing blighted structures back to life. Our projects sometimes spur more projects close by, and thereby neighborhoods slowly transform. This kind of work can be extremely meaningful to my team and I, as well as those that live in the surrounding neighborhood.
But to most people in the world, the project means nothing. Buffalo is the 50th largest city in the United States. Developing a single building on a specific corner of downtown Buffalo can have a huge impact right there, but the farther away you go people just don’t care because it literally doesn’t affect their lives one bit. To our community it might be impactful, but in the big picture it’s just a single building in a country with millions of them. It’s all relative.
There’s another side to meaning that’s the most beautiful though. Sometimes we share the same meaningful things with others and that is truly special. Families, even extended families, have incredible bonds because every person in that group counts the same people as their kin. Siblings share the same parents and they will always have that in common.
Fanhood is just like that too. It brings us close to those who love the same team, or the same band. Common interests and passions and circumstances unite us. If we live on the same block we are all invested in how the neighborhood evolves. In these situations we are all together and on the same side.
So on one hand I know almost nothing, while on the other I have a deep and growing understanding of what’s meaningful, even though meanings are constantly changing, and what something means to me might be totally different than what it means to even my closest friends.
And one last thought: if there is a God, and if that God for some reason is checking in on my blog posts, please do what you can to help the Bills win the Super Bowl this year. It would mean the world to us here in Buffalo. For as little as I know, that’s one thing I’m absolutely sure of.