You Can Go Your Own Way

I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. -Roger Ebert

Two friends I loved like a brother and sister got divorced last year. Last night someone who’d just found out about it texted me wondering what happened. “Things Fall Apart,” I said, with a nod to Keats and Achebe. The simple answer is the easiest, but behind every decision to walk away, there’s a story. We rarely know all of anyone’s story but our own, and we’re often not self aware enough to even know that. In Kyrie Irving’s case, there’s far more we don’t know than what we do. So we speculate, and as the jilted ones, probably do so bitterly.

I know I’ve been critical of Kyrie. After his bizarre appearance on First Take last week, I got into it a bit with Ben Werth over email, but Ben got me thinking.

Let’s be honest. LeBron didn’t have to try on D but yelled at everyone about it. For a guy who truly considers himself an equal to LeBron, he [Kyrie] must have been pissed when everyone blamed him for everything. He’s done nothing [publicly since the trade] but try not to blame anyone and to be a happy dude.

There’s nothing wrong with trying to be happy. Kyrie is incredibly fortunate to have the agency to be able to change his situation to one he prefers, if was unhappy in Cleveland. I don’t say “fortunate” as if he should be grateful or content that he has it so good. “Would that we were all so lucky,” I mean. When one’s choices hurt other people though, things get sticky.

Cavs fans have every right to be upset at Kyrie’s request for exodus. Professional Sports are built on a foundation of emotional attachment to regional identity and the familiarity of a “team identity” that is marketed to fans. When a player walks away from that, especially after seven years, with the last three ending at the highest level of basketball that can be played, we’re all going to be a little hurt, shocked, pissed, and bewildered: natural reactions, but we don’t know Kyrie’s story.

Millennial, helicopter parent, “alpha dog” mentality, a rift with LeBron, sick of Cleveland, jealousy, the challenge of something new… though we can guess at the narrative, and be completely at odds with the choices Kyrie is making and his motivations for doing so, if we care about him, we’ve got to let him go his own way. Koby Altman and Dan Gilbert did that. If you truly love/care about someone, you don’t want them to be in a relationship with you that makes them miserable – even if you think it’s all in their head.

My wife and I have a thesis: “Everyone should check with us before making any major decisions.” If they did, the world would be a much better place. “Why the hell is she dating him…” “They bought a house where?” My insufferability aside, it’s actually a good thing we don’t all think the same way. If we did, the world would be an incredibly boring place. Where would we be if Albert Einstein had listened to someone’s advice and remained a patent clerk, if Jonas Salk had decided to get rich on the Polio Vaccine instead of giving it away, if Rosa Parks had not started the Birmingham bus boycott, or if Gandhi hadn’t started the Salt March. Kyrie requesting a trade isn’t remotely on par with those actions, but we’ve got to take the good with the bad – even if it drives us nuts.

I also know that anyone can get to the point in a job or a career where it just feels miserable, or you feel you’ve gone as far as you can go and that it’s time to move on, even if to those on the outside it might seem like a great job. I left a job like that a couple years ago. My own brother quit his job as an electrical engineer to become a college pastor. I didn’t get it. I still don’t get it. I was always too afraid of being poor to quit any job. Half the problems in the world exist because one person can’t reconcile how another person’s mind works. But it makes him happy, and he’s doing what he believes will help make the world a better place. I’d say “would that we were all so lucky” again, but what would become of the world if we all took this route and decided to become pastors, rock stars, basketball players, beat poets, or motivational speakers? Nothing would get done.

But I can’t begrudge people the pursuit of happiness. This world so often seems on the precipice. Back in the public discourse are apocalyptic events: hurricanes, earthquakes, forest fires, nuclear war, a sixth “mass extinction” by 2100… To be a young person in this day and age must be much like it was in the days of the Cuban Missile crisis: living with an eye towards the end of humanity. YOLO, indeed. For a “very much woke” person like Kyrie Irving, I don’t know if I could even imagine wanting to play basketball. OK, I know that’s a lie. The problems of the world often seem so massive and beyond our own control that we can be overtaken by feelings of powerlessness, nihilism, or just outright denial. Things we can control, like a basketball and 94 feet of hardwood have to feel like home to a guy with Kyrie’s kind of control. If I had his game, I’d live on the court. For us mere mortals though, the choice between chasing our dreams and making a living is a real one.

Fortunately, the wanderlust for fulfillment seems to be a first world problem, and for many who come to this country, the dream is to work, have a nice place to live, and make a better future for your children. I’ve been watching Aziz Ansari’s outstanding show, Master of None recently, and in the second episode, “Parents,” second generation immigrants, Dev and Brian take their folks out for dinner to thank them for bringing them to America and for the sacrifices they’ve made for them. They ask their parents what they did for fun when they came to this country. Dev’s father replies.

You realize fun is a new thing, right? Fun is a luxury only your generation really has.

It makes me think about how fortunate I am, and the paradox of complaining about unhappy situations when I’m more well off and have more agency than 85% of the people in the world (that number’s a total guess). For myself, I’ve often said that the secret to life is finding what you love and doing it for the rest of your life… on nights and weekends.

The perception of a sports star’s dissatisfaction despite scores of advantages goads the average onlooker, though. Maybe that’s why we’re all so irritated at Kyrie Irving’s unhappiness in Cleveland. We can’t empathize. I know it’s why some people are so irritated with national anthem protests in the NFL and beyond. Athletes seemingly get paid millions to play a game, and in the eyes of many should not ruin the entertainment with protests that strike many as offensively unpatriotic. This is a sport that markets military service and nationalism as much as it hocks Budweiser.

How do we reconcile all this? How do we do what we need to do to be productive members of society while still finding work that fulfills us? How do we try to affect change with our own situations and with the situations of others (often far less fortunate than us) without seeming ungrateful and selfish? How do we make the world a better place, while not getting overwhelmed? How do we leave a situation without hurting people, or at least treating them as fairly as possible? I didn’t want this to devolve into a question of utilitarian ethics, because I don’t know the answers.

As fans we can take solace in our regional identity and sports’ power to uplift and make people sacrifice for ideals and goals bigger than themselves. We can hope we can extrapolate those ideals and lift up the community as a whole. Hopefully the new group of players we get to watch this year will do that, and us with them. But if someone (even the King) wants out, I’ll try to empathize, let them go, and hope they don’t treat me like an a**hole. As long as we’re not hurting anyone, we should all do what makes us happy and try to help as many people as possible along the way. Damn what anyone else says.