Rooting for Your Ex…
or: What Kevin Durant Can Teach Us About the Art of Letting Go.
“If you love someone, set them free.”
-Sting
Our relationship to art is complex and yet simple. Generally speaking we can admire artwork for its beauty, what it provides for us in terms of comfort, helping us to value the way artists mimic reality and provide hues and shades that give ordinary life depth. But the less popular form of artistry is composed of utter messes and confusion, works that intentionally distort and make us uncomfortable to the point that we want to look away from the canvas. While the former may be easier to appreciate, it is the latter that digs at us because those pieces tend to reach down into our insecurities and our misunderstandings. We may try to argue that the artwork is of poor quality, but more likely than not we are troubled that we are no longer treading safe waters.
I used to despise modern art. Admittedly, I didn’t understand it and I had the oft-repeated thought that a child could produce the same results. Years back I visited the Tate Modern in London while backpacking through Europe, and it was there that my perspective began to change. I was surrounded by the best of the best of modern works, and I was provided context to understand that these artists desired visceral reactions on the part of their spectators that went beyond admiration and satisfaction. These artists created works that upended traditionalism, that forced their viewers to look into themselves and potentially discover within their own messiness and distortion. It’s by no means a comforting process, but I began to understand this wish for engagement on a different level. These artists couldn’t repeat the movements of artists prior, they had to do what was right for them in their own time. They were left with a choice: stay safe at home or venture out into a new, dangerous frontier. Let me be quite clear on one thing: there is a lot of pretentious modern art out there that is horrific, but in this moment I began to understand the philosophical approach.
I also began to see that art can be meaningful both as a medium for reflecting beauty and as a tool for challenging our pre-existing notions. These approaches were both necessary, and they were instructional not simply as a way to understand artistry but as a way of dealing with life. We are creatures who at times need to be oriented to order and structure and beauty. But if we only live in that status we will never move and grow as humans. We require moments and events that throw us off-kilter, that shake our foundations and disorient us. It is not at all pleasant, but it usually the force that helps us evolve.
Iwrote a public letter a year ago to Kevin Durant thanking him for his work in Oklahoma, but still hopeful that he would remain with the Oklahoma City Thunder. That didn’t happen, of course. And in the ensuing events many jerseys were burned, Facebook posts were angrily typed, and KD retweets and memes flowed abundantly from various fans. Truthfully, I understood the reactions. A player willfully leaving a local team feels like an act of betrayal, a deep cut at the center of our collective being. One the face of it, it is a ridiculous notion. But sadly it is an undeniable one for those of us who are in fact fans.
Because I felt hurt too.
I yelled.
I cursed.
“To the Warriors, really?!”
But I came back to myself. I started to think like a human again. Especially in this case, feelings should not overpower our logical abilities. The truth is this: A young man in his prime made a personal decision that benefited himself economically and emotionally. A man made a business decision to surround himself with the best talent around in order to achieve the highest prize in his field of work. And the man was content and happy with that decision. It is as plain as that. It is also as painful as that. While I wanted to be rational, I couldn’t help but feel the pain of that departure.
The art of our relationships is simple and yet complex. When we are in loving relationships, the world feels beautiful. We see design, we see organization, we see completion. Ordinary life is given texture and geometric composition. It’s straight lines and focal points and our existence feels wonderfully curated. Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper (above) is a testament to life and artwork that reflects this wholeness: it features pyramid configuration, straight lines that draw us toward the center, and symmetry that aligns us. Yes there is confusion among the figures in the foreground, but the disciples are reacting to the dominant messiah and are surrounded by divine direction and a plan.The Renaissance artists drew upon the works of the Greeks and the Romans, favoring the values of strength, reason, and mathematics. The world made sense and was meant to be understood.
We need moments where life makes sense, but we also know that life never stays this way. Our relationships are never fixed in stone though they can be stabilizing.
But then changes occur, perhaps slowly at first.
Rumors persist and we begin to get the sinking feeling that something is afoot.
Movements change, bodies shift and we start to feel askew.
I can’t think of another piece of art that troubles me like Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. Created as a reaction to the bombing of that town during the Spanish Civil War, the piece is about destruction and the accompanying horror and anguish of its’ citizens. It is not a beautiful work, it is meant to allow the spectator to get an insider’s view. It is about the experience of the event. Picasso doesn’t want us to turn away from it, he wants us to sit with the pain and face it.
The historicity of this painting is essential to understanding the construction, but it can also be a metaphor for our own distortedness. Our existence can be disorienting, and instead of running from that truth it is imperative that we face it head on. Life can be ugly, both what we experience externally in our world and what we recognize internally about ourselves. This can be witnessed in our most meaningful relationships but also in our most shallow of wishes.
The NBA’s 2016–17 season started but Durant showed up in the wrong jersey and playing for the wrong team. And so the hurt came back, the yelling came back, and the cursing followed too. The first games and initial highlights felt unbearable to watch. Then reality set in the longer the season went on. Durant had moved on from our beloved Thunder. He didn’t miss us and he didn’t call. He had someone new. It’s incredibly hard watching your ex have a great time, I thought.
I had the realization a few years ago that I was on amicable and sometimes great terms with many of my ex-girlfriends. Of course, it was the rare case that it ever started out that way. Time had to pass, forgiveness had to occur, and faked attempts at pleasantries had to happen before anything else could be reconciled. I remembered that a friend had once referred me to Sting’s song If You Love Somebody Set Them Free when giving me some relationship advice. His perspective was that in order to find healing you had to let that person go a piece at a time. If they were a caged bird in your heart, you had to open the gate and watch them fly away. It would be painful, no doubt, but your only other option was to keep them locked in against their will. He said the best of our humanity is not about our control or manipulation of others, it is about wishing the best for others even beyond the way we feel about a given situation. If we have the chance to offer freedom, it would always be the greater and nobler option. To my younger self that was a painful pill to swallow. And yet it helped.
When Game 5 of the Finals ended, and Kevin Durant’s decision to leave OKC completed his closure, a deeper truth came to the surface of my mind. Our relationships, whether they be with actual people we know and relate to, or the ones we support or heckle in arenas or on television, are never “ours”. If you love someone set them free is the wrong premise. Setting them free falsely posits that we can possess someone else, that they are under our whim and control. The reality is that we are the ones who are possessed. We are enslaved to their presence or absence, and what that might mean to our personal existence. We are haunted by the lack, by the void we experience when those people are gone. Freedom begins for ourselves when we face the loneliness and experience the distortion in our lives. When we start to see clearly that we can be separate from them, that they are not in fact our identity, that is when we can experience a type of exorcism. That is when we no longer have to be haunted by them. We can appreciate and be grateful for those moments of beauty that they offered to us, but we can not hold them accountable when they choose to act out of their personal freedoms. We have to transition toward the blank canvas of ourselves, where they can’t be allowed to sketch or paint on us anymore. It is we who have the responsibility to do the creating. We have to do the building.
I’ve been to two weddings featuring former girlfriends. Sure there is some awkwardness, but they were lovely experiences. So I root for my exes now, I like their social media posts, and I genuinely feel joy for their successes. I sincerely wish the best for them and I wish the best for Kevin Durant (that may be the weirdest thing I have ever written). I hope he wins more championships to be honest.
But I hope the Thunder can win some as well.
I’m hoping I can continue to build myself a life and create and be free. And if I’m building a healthy life, I will want that for others as well.
I’m hoping we can all be happy.
If you’re still feeling raw about the whole deal, or about the losses you have experienced, I completely get it. But do yourself a favor: If you love yourself, set yourself free. It’s a lesson in fandom, but also for life in general.
Call a priest if you need to.
