Hope

"To believe is to commit." Oswald Chambers

I watched the Michigan-Illinois game on Saturday with a strange sense of detachment. I don't think I've ever watched a Michigan game feeling like that. Maybe the 2007 Minnesota game. I fully expected us to lose at every point in the game--after we scored a touchdown on the first play, after we went ahead by a touchdown in the second quarter, after we went ahead by a touchdown in the second quarter, after we made the final two-point conversion in triple overtime. I was happy when we won, but not as happy as usual.

At the risk of sounding emo, hope is something I've tended to shun. For whatever reason, my tendency is to believe that hoping for something that doesn't happen is just about the worst possible result. In other words, better to set the expectations low and be pleasantly surprised, and it's still okay if the result isn't great. At least you didn't hope.

That also means I get to be above it all, so to speak. When your expectations can't really go lower, then you can't be taken by surprise in a negative way. So I've figured it out! Disappointment is something I'll never have to experience. Cheesy motivational quotes and unfounded optimism are for the suckers; they played the lottery and lost, and now I have my dollar still to wave in their faces. It's not much, but it's something.

So even though I'm a die-hard Michigan fan, my investment in the Illinois game had to be small. (College football is one of the few areas in which I actually am willing to put my emotions on the line.) And in plenty of other areas in my life--as I'm sure several of you know--I insist on low to no expectations.

Is it wrong to be that resigned about various things? Part of me still wants to embody that Rudyard Kipling poem, "If," or the quote by Teddy Roosevelt about the man in the arena. (Forget the cheesy quote stuff.) But there's always the issue of failure out there. It's hard to get over the fact of failure, the possibility of it. If you tried and failed, was it really worth it to have tried. It's difficult to come up with an answer for that question other than "no."

On the other hand, maybe being one of the suckers isn't so bad. I suppose you at least know you have company.