Yesterday i was one of the billion humans watching the World Cup final. It wasn't the greatest of games for us spectators, but it was thrilling to be a tiny part of such a huge moment. During and after the game we saw through cameras setup in cities around the globe how huge crowds in every corner of it had turned out to cheer on more than just their favorite team, they cheered/celebrated the game itself. Sport has an ability to lift the human spirit beyond their normal divisions, yesterday was one of those moments. The usually politically divided Spain saw people in the streets of every region wearing the red and yellow and cheering wildly for 'their' team. Relatively tiny Holland was an equally festive shade of orange, apparently so much was bought that the country ran out of orange paint the day before the final.
But the trancendent wave broke far beyond the shores of the of the finalists, beyond Africa, beyond all the avid fans. For those hours during the game 1,000,000,000 humans were seeing one sight, feeling 'the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat' so absorbed in our attention to the 'game' we hardly noticed the differences in our cultures, our colors, our langauge, or the community of like-ness we were.
The world was watching itself yesterday, there was no war, no religion, no politician or demegogue on stage. No phrophet or dictator told us to watch, we just did. We are, as a species, capable of unity but our energy is usually divided by those who benefit from that division.
Viewed in one direction the prism of 'sport' allows us to view our range of differences as all part of one humanity, in the other it shows that the wideness of life's colors and flavors are but portions of the endless whole.
