This is not a bash Tiger Woods post, nor is it a defense of him. I'm just curious about something that goes really beyond Tiger's problems right now. In a sense, I think we are all Tiger Woods, or have that potential-the potential, that is, to fuck up royally. This guy has it all-he's a billionaire, he has (for now) a wife who possesses the kind of physical beauty that most men can only fantasize about, he has what on the surface appears to be an idyllic family life, he is, or has been, literally the idol of millions, and he is one of the few sports figures who is not only a role model, but who up until now presumably deserved to be considered as such.
Then he had to go and fuck it up by screwing around not just with one extra-marital affair, but two-and maybe three. Maybe more than that. And he did it with such a casual flair it's almost like he was wanting to be caught. He texted one of his mistresses with his wife in the house, as well as his mother and mother-in-law.
Is there something about us, as a species, that the more we have, the more unworthy we feel, and so we go about trying to sabotage our lives to where we can bring ourselves back down to earth? Are we really that bad deep down that we just on some inner level don't feel like we deserve good things?
Or is it possible that, when we achieve the penultimate success, and wealth beyond our wildest dreams, and the adoration of the masses, it does something to us that we are led to think that we are invincible, infallible, gods in the flesh. Is this an example of a situation where, when we are successful and well-loved, it causes us to drop our pretenses of morality and just be more comfortable than what we should be, being what we really are?
Does it lead us to believe that our success is a sign that we are actually better than most other people, and so deserve to indulge our whims, even those things that we know would cause others to judge us harshly, while accurately seeing us as we really are?
Do we indulge our most base pleasures as a means of dulling some unspeakable pain from our past, or even our present, some raw nerve or wound that never quite healed, but which we have never managed to face up to? Is it some suicidal impulse that causes us to do those things that we should know are self-destructive, that will hurt those who love and depend on us, and send our lives spiraling even further out of control? Do we do these things as an unconscious method of making ourselves come face to face with the pain by way of pleasure?
We all deserve to be loved, or at least we all did at one point. But do any of us really deserve to be adored? If the world sees us as perfect, can we really be human?
The answer to that last question is yes, and that's the good news. It's also the bad news.
4 comments:
Great men have great libidos.
That isn't the whole story though. They most generally also have great self-discipline and control.
Unless like Tiger they hold the wrong values towards which to direct that self-discipline and control with anything resembling a sense of "duty".
TPT, of course you answer your own questions already in asking them.
The sordid story of Woods has many layers, but his hubris and a sense of entitlement seem to be pervasive threads in all of them.
Like many men (and women) with an oversized ego, he appears to believe that he should have his cake and eat it too -- and that the moral rules and limitations that bind lesser mortals do not apply to him. Alas, he's finding out (one hopes) that this is not the case after all.
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