The Super Bowl. Pressure. Toxic Masculinity.

If you listened carefully to the pre-game Super Bowl “coverage” - you heard in a stretch of about 15 minutes repeated uses of the word “pressure.” The entertainers posing as analysts said variations of: “the winner is gonna be the team, gonna be the guy “WHO FEELS NO PRESSURE, will not crack under pressure!…unable to feel pressure!!!”

As if to say anyone playing this sport must become an automaton, incapable of feelings. “AND THEN YOU’LL WIN!!" What cultural sewer garbage by these imbeciles.

If you’re reading this and you feel pressure from time to time - congratulations you are not a sociopath. You are normal, exactly where you should be!

I’m sick of this connotation that adulation in the highest forms whether that be playing for the Super Bowl, getting a degree, playing for a Gold Medal, becoming a soldier, having a job upholding White Power as a police officer - can only be acquired by those “WHO DON’T FEEL PAIN.” What a load of shit.

For those of us here on Earth - what we do in the presence of fear and pressure is everything. How we react to - AKA process - our thoughts and feelings will dictate our direction. The repression, denial and absence of natural thoughts and feelings is a recipe for sadness, loss, and worse. You are not a failure if you feel pressure to perform, stress to accomplish, fear for your safety. It’s bullshit to suggest otherwise.

So next time you’re in a room and someone on television says some stupid shit like those pre-game buffoons before the Super Bowl about how you’ve got to be an indestructible robot to “win the game” - your task is to call out that person spouting bullshit. Give them the finger. Especially! if you’re in a room full of people. NORMALIZE human experiences and feelings. We must become anti-asshole. It’s not enough to just know not to be one.

It is OK to have pressure, it is OK to be afraid. The absence of pressure will not make you WIN or be loved. You are already worth love as you are right now! It is what you do with your current circumstances that creates the paths to your future.

I wish somebody woulda taken me and told me all these things until I believed them when I was a younger person playing High School football quarterback. I wish someone would have told me I was gonna be okay. You know someone who right now needs to be shaken up and told they are experiencing a fucked up world but THEY are normal, they are okay. Go find them and tell them. Especially if it’s you who needs to know.

#superbowl

#toxicmasculinity

#pressure