GO LAKERS!

This week the Lakers are playing the Celtics for the NBA Playoffs.  I'm not really a basketball fan, so that last sentence may be all wrong, but you understand what I'm meaning...  I guess if I have to pick a team, I'm Lakers all the way... I really enjoy watching basketball, compared to other sports (although I did catch some of the World Cup on Saturday afternoon and I could probably follow that if I were inclined).

It didn't hit me until today that it has been almost a year since I moved out of Echo Park and ended my last long term relationship... The last good memory I have of that time is catching the Playoffs last year on a TV at a Pub.  The energy of the crowd was infectious and I ended up following the rest of the games until the Laker's won and I watched my fellow Los Angelenos riot (why the hell did you do that?) all over downtown.

So much time has passed, yet I don't feel like I have moved forward very far in my life.  I guess I'm still healing, still getting a handle on reality as a single person.  Exploring the ideas I used to think were "me" before I was subsumed by an "us".  I am afraid that I have lost my edge.

Witnessing the hoopla over the Lakers (at work, in  my neighborhood and even in my own household) makes me wonder why people get so riled up over a sports team.  I think people have a deep need for tribal affiliations and sports satisfies that.  It allows us to be a part of the competitive "us vs. them" dynamic in a relatively safe way.  If we were still living in caves, we would be hunting animals and defending ourselves from other caves with much the same psychological effect.