What Matters

People who make assumptions about car-hating, yoga-practicing, flute-playing, vegetarian philosophy teachers might be surprised to find out that this one is a somewhat serious follower of professional football, and those who note that I reside in Seattle might be even more taken aback to discover that I’m a close to fanatical Pittsburgh Steelers fan.

Full disclosure: I bleed Black and Gold.

Of course, I have an excuse: I grew up in the Steel City, in the glory days of the Steel Curtain, when my hometown team dominated the NFL, winning four championships in a under a decade, establishing a dynasty that’s never been matched. My dad had season tickets, and we went together to dozens of games, those occasions being some of the best father-son bonding experiences of my adolescence and during many of those turbulent teenage times, the only thing that kept he and I from filicide or patricide, respectively.

Consequently, I was totally psyched by this year’s Superbowl, in which the Steelers, though underdogs according to the Vegas betting lines, had a chance to beat the Green Bay Packers and in doing so, win their unprecedented seventh Lombardi Trophy; it was a big deal to me, even over here in India.

I got up at 5:30 AM to listen to the game on internet radio, and sat by my laptop for three hours silently cheering and agonizing over the broadcast, which ultimately resulted in the Steelers losing a game they shoulda coulda won, undone by three costly turnovers, final score Green Bay 31, Pittsburgh 25.

Big deal, right?

Sure, but not really; a million protesters in the streets of Cairo could care less; a couple billion folks in China certainly slept through the entire contest; and here in India, hundreds of millions of people are instead getting fired up for the only sporting event that really matters: the Cricket World Cup, starting the week after next.

I try to be sanguine about the loss and keep it in perspective: after all, I’ve got my health, my darling family whom I miss terribly is coming in just over two weeks, and to top it off, I managed to get into Maricasana D

all by myself this morning!