There are a few benefits of getting older (not old, but older). One is a natural gravitation to earlier bedtimes and meals. Another is collateral to that: being awake before everyone else and enjoying a moment of peace. A third is knowing some recipes by heart, and being able to make a mean short rib without having to refer to an oily piece of paper.
A less-contemplated (and yes – less pleasant) benefit is that, if you are a sports fan you’ve been through a number of cycles of both quality and awfulness with any team for which you root. Age means that you’ve (hopefully) seen a height or two, but it also means that you’ve trudged through more plentiful dark times with your affiliated franchises. And this steels you.
It doesn’t make you less emotional in any given moment (Twitter says hello) since sports is essentially about a weirdly intense emotional connection between you and some random group of athletes in a zero-sum competition. Your first instinct is to demand victory, and the secondary (though important) factor is to be entertained. But that first part typically rules the moment. If you can survive sports fandom simply on entertainment value then more power to you, but we usually demand some combination of success and pleasure with the former taking the lead. If the first part is not there then the second can only go so far.
Age tempers things, though. Mostly because teams lose. Fandom involves supporting failures, for the most part. And if you are older you’ve supported a LOT of failures. So what’s going on with Arsenal right now is familiar, nothing new. It’s not the end of the world, even if it feels like it in the moment. Age means knowing that this situation isn’t really at all weird. It’s disappointing, and unfortunate, and frustrating, but it’s also what mostly happens in sports. It is the norm.
The measure of our franchise (and the ownership of our franchise) will in this moment not be one of wins and trophies, but of how quickly it can turn things around. Because age tells me that a turnaround will happen. ”Success” at this time, is thus about compressing failure, about truncating a moment of difficulty. It isn’t about not losing – because we are going to keep losing. It’s about shortening this moment, about how swiftly we can correct the path. About speeding up the aging process.
With a bit of sleep and a cup of coffee my wizened self feels a tad less angry. Because I’ve seen this all before. I’ve cavorted with a lot of losers, paid good money in the interest of observing spectacular misadventure. So, to one last benefit of aging: associating with failures can, in certain moments, bring a small modicum of personal peace.
Onwards and back upwards, Arsenal, at some point.*
*(but make it swift, if you can – this “getting older” process doesn’t reverse itself)