The existential despair of a Soccer Star

[Edit: This is not a great post, is full of grammatical mistakes but I don't want to touch on this topic any further but I still think there is something here to be discussed.]

I don't mean to be dismissing on another person's despair or sadness. But I just want to put it in perspective.

Yahoo Sports posted this online yesterday:

The existential despair of Cristiano Ronaldo

By Brian Phillips

The article blows out of proportion what Cristiano actually says. He just mentions his sadness at losing (something easily understandable at such a big and prominent event) and the article that actually mentions he being a 'broken man' is a link to a BBC interview with him. My first take on this is of disgust... my biases all seem to overtake me on this one, because he is just a month older than I am, has a better body and is on the face of the media constantly; something very much like the green eyed monster. To be honest, not that I want all that pressure on me, and that's why I shift from disgust to empathy on this issue. Though he will provoke little empathy from a lot of people (for being a model, a famous athlete, etc) he still is in a career that puts a lot of pressure on the him.

At the same time, I don't want to commit the same mistake my therapist did with me by saying: "Why would someone as successful as you, who obtained an all expense paid research experience to Cornell for the summer ever think that way about himself?" (This was at a time when I was feeling a bit sad). He still has the right to be "broken" by this event but he will be fine sometime soon when he gets back to the rhythm of things (I think). Anyway, to think about this and all the crap we grad students receive I'll share a Facebook status that I posted yesterday when I heard of these news:

"The existential despair of Ronaldo? Really yahoo sports? I mean existential? Just because his pretty face failed to qualify for the next round? When is Yahoo news going to do an article of the emotional despair of graduates students? i.e. getting rejected by grad school, getting rejected by grants/fellowships/funding, ...getting grilled on by how bad you write, receiving critiques that make you feel mediocre, never being good enough to your superiors in Academia, living on scrap money... how is that not existential despair? stupid stupid news"

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