On Joy, Triumphalism, and Mood.

Having had my interest in sport kindled over the past couple of weeks, today I found myself questioning the relative attributes of joy and triumphalism. I was trying to work out whether the two were inevitably conjoined, or whether they were essentially separate. I decided on the latter.

Joy is natural in moments of success, and there are those who say that joy is the default state of consciousness. I remember noticing the women’s football team after the match finished on Sunday night. They went over to the crowd, not to bask in glory but to share their joy. I liked that because it seems to me that joy is an expression of the higher mind, and what greater goal can we humans have but to aspire to connect with the higher mind?

And then there have been times when I’ve seen other sports practitioners express a different response to success. They strut; they punch the air; they do laps of honour to say ‘how wonderful am I?’ They revel in having brought their opponent to an abject state and then bask in the adulation of the crowd. They wallow in a show of seedy self-importance which I feel to be the essence of triumphalism, and is rooted, I’m sure, very much in the basement of the mind. It’s the sort of attribute we associate with the likes of Hitler, Mussolini and Trump.

I remember odd moments of success I had in sport when I was younger. I remember feeling disappointed and annoyed when nobody congratulated me. I shouldn’t have felt that way, should I? I should have been glad of the lesson.

But now I feel sanctimonious, and find myself coming back to the same old question: Does any of it really matter? I wish I knew.

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This evening was an unusual one – warm but windy with a messy sky of pink and orange and blue and grey, and clouds of every type and character rushing more in hope than majesty to somewhere over the north-eastern horizon. Such intemperate conditions move something within me and bring me to a state of mind which precludes any attempt at description.