Picture Credit - NPR
Note - Spoiler Alert
I just finished watching the Apple TV show, Ted Lasso. For the uninitiated, this show is about an American football coach who is recruited to coach a failing British football team - the sport known as soccer in the United States. The show is delightful. While the language is salty and my eyes rolled at some of the innuendo (mainly because both feel lazy) you have this truly good man who is thrown into an impossible situation. He knows nothing about football that is not American (ie soccer),he knows nothing about the UK and their ardent and tumultous love of football, and he is clueless that he is being exploited and used. Despite that, he goes into the situation with optimistic joy. He has this ability to make everyone he meets feel a little bit better about life and about themselves. Even the most cynical character is changed by meeting Ted Lasso.
Very little in the show is predictable. While we humans love a story line of the underdog becoming a hero or the losing team suddenly winning, this is not a story that follows those feel good predictable narratives. Instead, it does something far better: It gives the viewer a sense that no matter how bad things get, it really is okay, that resilience is not developed by overcoming a flatline, but by coping with mountains, valleys, and flatlines. That's the magic of the show.
A marriage fails, an aging soccer star hangs up his jersey, a scorned woman continues to be completely mocked by her ghastly ex-husband, and a team does not win. But despite all of that, the players, the coach, the assistant coach, the locker room assistant - even an arrogant journalist - all become better people.
The players learn to play as a team. The locker room assistant learns that his observations are worthwhile. The arrogant journalist learns to give someone grace instead of maligning them. The scorned ex-wife/owner of the team learns to apologize and really mean it.
It is remarkable.The last episode of the season is called "The Hope that Kills You" and it is one of the only times when you see Ted Lasso angry. He's angry about the phrase. His philosophy is not about winning, it's about playing - specifically, playing well, playing as a team, and having fun. But this last game is against a significant rival and has far-reaching implications for the team. Over and over he's told "Hope will kill you." It's a phrase that grew out of a downtrodden people and team; a phrase that spoke of hope deferred over and over and over until it was no longer viable. Hope is a disaster, or worse - it's a fatality. This, for Ted Lasso, is unbearable. He can handle multiple insults coming from every side, he can handle outright and subtle ridicule, but he cannot bear watching people dismiss hope.
This is where Ted Lasso and the current state of the Pandemic world collide. Hope within this pandemic has died. It's a disaster, or worse - it's a fatality. We are daily given doses of why we can't hope, why we must be cautious, why nothing will ever get back to "normal."
It's exhausting to have so many voices telling us that hope is going to kill us. And I for one, am done. Not only does the pessimism exhaust me, it defeats every thought, every dream, and every plan. It's not just a disaster, it's a fatality.
So I'm going to go all Ted Lasso on you - I'm going to loudly proclaim that hope is not what will kill you, it's the opposite. No - hope won't kill you - it will help you live.
Hope, my friends, will help you live. Sometimes it's all we have.
Somehow in our world we give gold stars to sophisticated cynicism and educated skepticism. Those with hope are audaciously childish and need to be put in their place. So we put them in their place. We put them in their place with statistics and data, with charts and graphs, with "that will never work" and snide side glances. And if that doesn't work, we put them in their place with mockery and ridicule. Just like the crowds in Ted Lasso.
He responds with unrelenting optimism, with tireless goodwill, with determined effort to see the good in each human being and situation he encounters, and it drives some people crazy. But he keeps it up.
I want to be like that. And if it's put on my tombstone "Above all, she had Hope" then what a grace.
What a grace indeed."The living can't quit living because the world has turned terrible.....They can't because they don't. The light that shines into darkness and never goes out calls them on into life. It calls them back again into the great room. It calls them into their bodies and into the world, into whatever the world will require. It calls them into work and pleasure, goodness and beauty, and the company of other loved ones."
Wendell Berry in Hannah Coulter
[Picture Credit https://www.npr.org/2020/11/10/933599086/how-ted-lassoed-his-way-into-our-hearts%5D
