I Feel Nothing When the Yomiuri Giants Lose—Reaching the Indifference That Lies Beyond Hatred

I saw the news that the Yomiuri Giants had been eliminated from the Climax Series, Japan’s professional baseball playoffs.

As a child, I would have been sitting in front of the television with my head in my hands. Back then, I was a passionate Giants fan.

Now, however, I feel nothing.

I am neither frustrated nor pleased. Whether the Giants win or lose has no effect on my life in the first place.

The team I once cared about so intensely has become as irrelevant to me as the chance of rain in some unfamiliar region on a weather forecast.

From Passionate Fan to Passionate Hater

I began to dislike the Giants because of the way they used their financial power to recruit star players from other teams.

I had supported them innocently as a child, but at some point I began to resent them. “What is so interesting about spending money to collect players and then winning?” I wondered.

And so a committed Giants hater was born.

I was happy when the Giants lost and angry when they won. The direction of my emotions had simply reversed from my days as a supporter; I still cared about the result of every Giants game.

When you think about it, a hater is also an extraordinarily devoted fan.

They constantly check what the person or team they dislike is doing, celebrate their failures, and become irritated by their successes. Entrusting your emotions to someone else’s results is an impressive level of dedication.

As I grew older, however, my interest in baseball itself gradually faded.

My passion for hating the Giants disappeared, and I stopped checking their results altogether.

There is a saying: “The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.”

I understand it now.

As long as you hate something, you are still interested in it. Once it truly ceases to matter, even hating it feels like too much trouble.

The Things I Still Keep Attacking

That made me stop and think.

On my blog, I repeatedly criticize and make sarcastic remarks about politics, religion, dysfunction in IT development projects, and even China.

Why do I go out of my way to do that?

If I had become completely indifferent to them, as I have to the Giants, there would be no reason to write about them at all.

Looking back, they are all things toward which I once felt some degree of hope or affection.

I still expect politics to do a somewhat better job of running society.

As for religion, I was deeply interested in Buddhist thought when I was younger. I keep my distance from it now, but that is precisely why the gap between its ideals and reality bothers me.

I have worked in the IT industry for many years, so I am strongly attached to it. Technology continues to advance, yet irrational decisions and pointless tasks are still repeated on the ground. When I see that happening, I cannot resist writing something about it.

And then there is China.

I often write critically about China on my blog now, but as a child, I actually liked the country.

Historical tales such as the stories of the Three Kingdoms had a major influence on me. China’s vast history, the maneuvering of its heroes, and its distinctive culture gave me a feeling toward the country that was almost a kind of admiration.

Now I read news about China and respond with sarcasm.

When I think about it, the path is remarkably similar to the one I followed with the Giants.

Apparently, I am far more persistent in my feelings toward things I once loved than toward things I disliked from the beginning.

Is Criticism the Remnant of Expectation?

People become disappointed precisely because they expected something in the first place.

Disappointment leads to criticism. As long as we continue to criticize, some part of us still expects the other side to change.

But once even that expectation disappears, all that remains is indifference.

For my former self, a Giants loss was a major event. Now I can see the news without feeling anything at all.

Will the day come when, no matter what politicians say, what happens in China, or what bizarre decisions are made on an IT project, I simply respond, “Oh, is that so?”

That sounds like it would make life considerably easier.

There would be no need to get angry, think up sarcastic remarks, or look for material for my blog.

The problem is that if I attain that much enlightenment, I will have nothing left to write about.

Apparently, my blog is sustained by a half-hearted attachment to a world that continues to disappoint me but that I still cannot completely abandon.

With the Giants, I have finally reached the state of indifference.

Someday, I would like to reach the same state with politics, religion, China, and the IT industry.

By then, of course, my blog will probably have gone out of business.

If I attain enlightenment, I will run out of blog material. It is a remarkably inconvenient religious dilemma.