Trading World Cup Euphoria for A Broken Umbrella
- Laura A. Weber
- Jul 9
- 5 min read
Our global pandemic of sadness was briefly interrupted these past few weeks by the astounding confluence of exhilaration and goodwill that is the FIFA World Cup. Like an umbrella of Joy! This is just what the world needs at this moment in 2026:
The thrumming, momentum-building chant of the Norwegian "Viking Row"
Antics of the Tartan Army that overtook Boston with conviviality and Scottish mirth
The traditional post-match fastidious cleaning and tidying of the stadium by conscientious Japanese fans
The effervescent Mexican wave
For U.S. fans, the communal sung refrain of John Denver's "Country Roads, (Take Me Home)" even surpasses images of valiant strikers sliding triumphantly after a "GOOOOOAL!"
The World Cup celebration has brought us all together for one brief, shining moment in the midst of war and calamitous global crises to cheer and cry, learn new language memes, new songs and dances, and welcome strangers-become-friends. The event has captured our imagination, inspired us, made us embrace, and helped us laugh out loud. It has brought the world closer together. In. So. Many. Ways. E pluribus unum.
Naturally, our euphoria swells with images of the very-famous and barely recognizable players of opposing teams filing out onto the pitch holding the hands of little ones who are watching carefully to imitate their hero's attitude, demeanor, and behavior. When national anthems play and flags are unfurled, athletes enter another realm, hands across their hearts, playing for all the communities they represent. Those from war-torn, significantly economically disadvantaged countries and those from comparatively wealthy, politically stable socio-economic contexts come together for the "most beautiful game," fútbol. It's the game anyone can play with just a Sphere shaped like our home planet, and a bit of Earth.
Then there was that red card. And all that followed. Total collapse of the U.S. men's national team in the knock-out round with Belgium. Coach said it didn't matter that political power-brokering interfered to overturn the decision to bar the star striker from the field for the game. No? Overnight, all the goodwill, positive disposition, sportsmanship, global synergy, and the spirit of fair play disintegrated in light of blatant political coercion to sway the outcome. It reeeeeked of foul play, and the entire fútbol world shuddered.
It was as though that giant canopy of Joy, protection and buoyant energy shielding our global community from convulsive mistrust, calumny, and disintegration, collapsed in one day. A broken umbrella, leaking, folding, and soaking us with cynicism and recrimination mangled our euphoria. "Overturn this!" one Belgian player posted after the walloping victory over the U.S. Indeed.
What can we learn from this sad drama? Perhaps this: in the game of Life, in going it alone, or trying to stand outside or above the collective, it is like trying to balance atop a precarious pyramid. Better to play in the round where everyone is included. We need each other for surviving and thriving as a whole.
If we raise a sturdy umbrella of mutual protection, we can weather the storms.
One of my heroes for managing existential Angst, a pioneer who understood planetary ecological crises affecting Earth's denizens, rhythms, and diverse beauty was the father of sociobiology, the eminent Edward O. Wilson (1929-2021). In his 1986 manifesto, Biophilia, he wrote of humanity's innate biological need to be connected with other living organisms and with Nature. We are by our nature, kin with all life in the biosphere. Wilson's famous prescription for what ails us in Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life (2016) is that we should set aside half the planet as a nature reserve, to allow the biosphere's ecosystem to heal from human-imposed destruction. Interdependence is key.
Wilson observed in Half-Earth: “Human beings are not exempt from the iron law of species interdependency. We were not inserted ready-made invasives into an Edenic world… The biosphere does not belong to us; we belong to it.” The mythical Cerberus (in Greek mythology, the three-headed Dog of the Underworld) comes to mind in what we face with planetary collapse, what Wilson called a three-headed threat in our current environmental crisis: climate change, mass extinction, ecosystem collapse. (Source)
The existential dread many experience in the face of biodiversity loss and mass species extinction through the dominance of one species, us, is what Wilson characterized as "The Age of Loneliness, the Eremocene." It's that feeling that we are causing the destruction of every living being around us, and ourselves in the process. Wilson lamented we are living in this epoch marked by an existential and material isolation resulting from having extinguished so many other forms of life. The Age of Loneliness. What might we do to supplant it?
Connect. Connect. Connect.
Wilson posited that humans are among the rare "eusocial" species in the biosphere (a feature we hold in common with ants and bees). This means human survival is deeply rooted in altruism, cooperation, and group selection rather than unbridled individual competition. (Source) Wilson famously rejected solipsistic ideologies that encourage isolationism and tribal superiority. He characterized our differences as primarily rooted in geography, and noted that we are quickly moving toward a future of global cooperation for mutual survival. He encouraged humanity to redirect our vision away from divisive ideologies of dominance and supremacy and toward protecting our planet as a whole, warning that isolationist thinking blinds us to the existential threats of environmental collapse and the mass extinction of biodiversity. (Source)
If we employ fútbol as a metaphor for life, it's simple. Developing skills is essential. Juggling, precision passing, scoring, all necessary, but these alone won't do. Collaboration, impeccable timing for in-sync teamwork, and whole-field vision matter. Good sportsmanship, fair play, abiding by the same cooperative matrix that holds a canopy of collaboration over all of us, i.e., playing together with passion, integrity and care for the other as much as the self, is required. Play as a team, a really good team.
The effects? Deep Connection. Excellence. Harmony. Beauty. Gratitude. Joy.
Why allow our Joy to erode? We can fix the broken umbrella. We can transform the Age of Loneliness.
I hope we can continue to support all the teams and players in the World Cup, those eliminated, and those making a run for the final. Oh, yes. Take us home, Country Roads! Our true Home, planet Earth. We can embrace a fully participatory, positively euphoric paradigm to fix the broken umbrella.
Just make it wider, and make sure every living being fits.
Otherwise, our Joy may shrivel beneath a broken umbrella.
"Of the Empire"
We will be known as a culture that feared death and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity for the few and cared little for the penury of the many. We will be known as a culture that taught and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke little if at all about the quality of life for people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a commodity. And they will say that this structure was held together politically, which it was, and they will say also that our politics was no more than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of the heart, and that the heart, in those days, was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
–Mary Oliver, Red Bird (2008)
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