The enemy of my rival

Would you rather Argentina win the World Cup or Germany? I've asked a number of my Brazilian friends and, to a person, and without hesitation--Germany. Why, I ask? Germany just inflicted on your national team the most devastating loss ever. But Argentina, they reply, Argentina!, proclaimed the best in the world in the Estadio do Maracana in Rio? Insupportable.

It seems there are opponents and there are rivals; whereas we wish for victory over the one, we want defeat for the other.

Proximity doesn't, familiarity doesn't diminish the passion of rivalry, in fact perhaps enhances it. These neighboring countries are so close they can hear each other: Argentines singing songs mocking the Brazilians and Brazilians, in deep grief, seething and retorting in kind.

My questions is how to understand this relationship where 'you' is a lacerating word, dipped in bitter bile. Of course, so much more is going on between the countries but this world cup intensifies the zero-sum rivalic aspect. In the throes, it seems that our very identity, even at the expense of our well-being, depends on the humiliation of the other.

Not a big sports fan, I still recognize the myopia of rivalry--the Celtics against the Lakers, for instance. Grrr. Living in a polarized world has a real appeal. It has dramatic intensity. It has focus. The 2nd person reference becomes weaponized, and whatever intimacy was possible is rendered despicable. Marriages are common arenas for this kind of combat. This I know.

One can readily imagine any of the great pairs of lovers ending up this way, their passion for each expressed perversely in excoriation, a 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' scratch-fest. Could God-in-love and the Beloved find themselves at odds this way? Have they not been already, at times? Maybe, maybe sometimes, but some deeper recognition reasserts itself: something about the immense potentiality of the other for being what neither could suspect, about the commerce of love dealing in goods utterly unanticipated, about the improbable meetings of the heart that inevitably open us to ourselves.

The tide of emotions in the next full days will run full. Already, the craft of schadenfreude are afloat and tugging at their moorings. Ears are so thick with blood, it's hard to hear; so much blood behind the eyes, it's hard to see.

I pray that to all of us, sooner rather than later, the gift-like quality of the word 'you' manifests itself, and the intensity and focus we find ourselves craving is found in encounters of hospitality, friendship and exploration.