Football-Hilarity and the Swing of Opposites
At work I heard yesterday afternoon a chorus of horn sounding over the city of Berne. A quick look into the internet showed the reason: Switzerland had won 2:0 over Togo at the Football World Championship. Football seems to be the only occasion where emotions are publicly going high in this country where showing emotions is not seen as a virtue. Already since the beginning of the championship a big poster is decorating the Bundeshaus, the Swiss House of Parliament, (which is wrapped in the moment because of renovation) humorously saying “Foodball is governing”.
On my way home there were a lot of hooting cars where people were holding Swiss flags out of the window. Over the place in front of the Bundeshaus there was a a cloud from fireworks and below a dancing and shouting reddish-white mass, and the colour-symphony went over to the red traffic busses, which were stopped by dancers with football shirts in the national colors. They were also tapping on passing-by cars. With my motor-bike I drove on the pavement in front of the Bundeshaus and thus wavingly escaped the commotion.
I had to smile. It was such a beautiful picture of childlike hilarity, which is so easily passing over to the opposite at the next occasion. It was like a symbol of man under the swing of emotions, keeping him in sway over a long part of his spiritual path. (“Man” also includes woman – or better: “wo-man” includes man, since the word comes from Sanskrit “Manushya”, meaning the mind-endowed being. However the masses of fans were mainly male…)
Man is caught in the pairs of opposites (: and football is a play of opposites par excellence, a beautiful example of the play of human life). Until man gains the bliss of the inner equilibrium the quickly changes of happiness and depression hold him in sway.
