Have you ever found yourself burdened by the weight of past
events and your mistakes? Not consequences necessarily, but the feelings
associated with the memory weighing on your mind. Perpetually feeling the
pressure to avoid the pitfalls of the past and judging yourself by a
self-imposed standard that may not reflect reality, the caveman parts of your
limbic system constantly engaged in a fight-or-flight tug of war that
eventually leads to more mistakes, more failures, more regrets. Or maybe it’s
just me; an anxiety disorder, predisposition to rumination, and an interest in
history that goes beyond mere hobby will tend to do that. If this doesn’t sound
familiar to you, congratulations! That’s awesome, I invite you to still play
along.
Ideally, one would be able to remember these past lessons
and apply them but operate without focusing on them. Unfortunately for some of
us it’s not that easy, but we nonetheless hope for that moment of clarity where
we can see the way forward and the ruminations fall to the background. A moment
that allows you to move beyond, to learn the lessons but avoid the crushing
guilt and disappointment associated with them. But that’s not how it works, or
at least it hasn’t been for me. It takes time and effort to retrain deeply
ingrained subconscious thoughts and behaviors. Before you can even start to
address them you have to learn how to recognize when it’s occurring, which it
turns out is a pretty tough level of self-awareness to attain. And even when
that happens, you have to accept that it’s not going to be perfect and
sometimes you’ll backslide; two steps forward, one step back.
I’ve heard these challenges referred to as our demons or
dragons, with the clear implication then that they can be slayed. If we’re
going to talk about them as mythical creatures I’ve come to view them more like
the hydra, the serpent of Greek mythology with multiple heads, one of which is
immortal. In some versions of the story, chopping off one head caused two new
ones to grow. It might feel like you’re making progress but there’s always the
threat that a new head has grown and it’s waiting to strike.
And yet sometimes you can trace progress to specific events.
The first time you’re able to see the hydra coming and deflect one of the
heads. The first time you realize you’ve not just deflected it but accepted
it’s there without focusing on it. And then for the first time you actually
slay one, then another, and another. Before long, you start lopping off the
heads faster than they can grow back. It’s not easier and the struggle will
never be over, but the knowledge you’ve been able to do it once makes the task
more manageable.
Being a Gopher football fan (and a Gopher fan in general,
frankly) often feels like you’re beset by the hydra, or maybe more than one.
I’m in my 20th year of Gopher fanhood and I’ve wondered more than
once if part of the reason I identify so closely with it despite the pain is
that it can be like a physical manifestation of my subconscious battles. The
heads of the hydra have taken many forms since 1960. We’ve all experienced some
of them, so we don’t need to review them in detail. People deal with these
things in different ways…eternal blind optimism, walking away and dedicating
yourself to Vikings (yeah, that’s the ticket!), or just eating pizza on the
floor. Some lucky folks have backgrounds with other more successful programs
and the joy they’ve been able to experience from those programs has kept their
tank sufficiently full to keep them going. Good on y’all.
But for those of us who don’t have that, a degree of jading
seems inevitable. I dealt with it by building barriers and compartmentalizing
in the same way I tried to deal with my more personal challenges. The hydra’s
still there but at least you’re able to keep it outside the ramparts and
sometimes you even lop off a head or two. It might even last for most of a
season, and you start cautiously taking the walls down brick by brick. But in
the end, new heads grow and you’re patching the walls again.
And then there was the issue of the immortal head in the
form of Wisconsin. For 14 straight years it resisted all attacks. Until 2018
when we found finally found a way to kill it. In 2019, there would be real,
true hope. Maybe we wouldn’t have to hide in the castle anymore and we could
start taking our kingdom back.
Then the pre-conference season hit, and it was starting to
look like maybe Wisconsin wasn’t the immortal head after all and more were
growing in its place. SDSU was harder than expected. Fresno State and Georgia
Southern were escapes that had as much the appearance of luck as that of skill.
Yellow alert! Get the bricks out of storage! After Georgia Southern my walls
were back to near-2018 Illinois game height.
Yet with each passing week it became more challenging to maintain
the walls, though I struggled mightily to keep them up. I hoped for the best
with everything I had, but surely the hydra would strike again. Gopher teams of
the past lose the Nebraska game. They drop the gimme game to Rutgers (you know
it’s true, you’ve seen it). They find a way to make Maryland look good. But this
year they didn’t. The rational reaction would be excitement, that this time
it’s different, and we’ve got a chance to do something amazing against Penn
State. In my head, however, I thought I saw the hydra lurking in the shadows
again.
It was a real challenge to maintain my defenses over the bye
week, and they almost broke entirely on the Friday before gameday. But I
recovered and by Saturday morning they were back at full force. I expected a
loss. I didn’t BELIEVE we would lose, but I was primed to accept it if and when
it came. Better to be able to sigh, shrug, and get on with my day. It won’t
hurt so bad that way.
But sometimes there’s a moment of clarity.
My wall came down when Jordan Howden wrapped up the
interception in the end zone today. Soul-crushing endzone interceptions happen
TO us, we don’t do them to others! But this year is different, and it’s not
just Antoine Winfield Jr. anymore either. Rashod Bateman catches tipped passes
to keep drives alive. CRAB runs a slant and finds the seam for the touchdown. We
can run more than one route. Rodney Smith finds the holes in the vaunted run
defense. We can fumble without completely falling apart. We’ve got multiple
receivers who can catch. Our O-line gets pushes, our linebackers stuff runs, we
have a 200 yard receiver, we’re in a season for the first time overall since
1941-42 and in a season since 1904, we’ve won 11 in a row for the first time
since 1940-42. We beat a top ten team for the first time since 1999, and a top
ten team at home for the first time since 1977.
I hugged my wife, and some of my closest friends who have
been there together through the long years. My sister and I cried, I sat in
shock in my seat but got up to watch time expire. This time IS different. There
will still be losses, still be disappointment, but the hydra is dead. It’s not
“we can’t” anymore, it’s “we can”. We won’t always pull it off, but the doubt
that it can happen here is gone. Put the bricks and mortar away.
For me, this means no more rehashing the disappointments of
the past in excruciating detail every time a similar situation comes up. We can
remember them without being defined by them. While we know this period won’t
last forever, we will live in the moment and enjoy every minute of it. I’ve
waited 20 years. Many people have waited much, much more. We’ll struggle to
maintain our new perspective sometimes, but I can’t deny it anymore. The hydra
is dead. Let’s enjoy our time in the sun.
A+, Frothy!! May Hydra never return.
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