Flotsam, Jetsam, Liam - Issue #11
“The world spins. We stumble on. It is enough.”
Originally published on Revue - September 28, 2021
Regretfully, rattling off self-indulgent cover letters has comprised too much of my writing output in 2021. While marveling at those of you who have taken up skateboarding, surfing, Italian, chess, baking and piano in the quarantine quest for fulfillment, I took several dozen stabs at the bizarre cover letter charade, triangulating between demonstrating my voice, anticipating what screeners were looking for, and remaining stoic despite doubts that anyone was reading my writing.
Unlike you skaters, bakers and pianists, the only pseudo-feedback I ever got was the occasional email inviting me to sign up for a phone screening, so I remain mystified as to what resonated. I’m happy to report though that my cover letter fling was not in vain. Please update your wisecracks to make fun of Liam, the health tech bro (more on that later), and spare the fragile ego of the consulting industry.
With a job search behind me, I promised myself I’d litter inboxes with another Flotsam, Jetsam, Liam before my 26th birthday, so here you have it, at the buzzer…
Mindgames
I’m now over a month into my new gig as a Mental Health Operations Specialist at Hazel Health. Bare with me as I regurgitate our corporate jargon for a moment:
Hazel, the largest and most trusted telehealth provider for K-12 schools, partners with school nurses to provide in-school physical and mental healthcare to over 2 million students and counting.
The rapid rise of telehealth during the pandemic saw Hazel expand its physical health solution to school districts around the country. As those relationships were established, school and district leaders were clamoring for a way to also link students to mental health services. Hazel’s response was to address that demand themselves, hiring therapists and behavioral health experts to see students at school or at home via an iPad.
I am neither a therapist nor a behavioral health expert, but I’m handy at designing scheduling solutions and onboarding new hires, and resolute about not letting logistical challenges get in the way of health access. Plus I think kids are wonderful. Five weeks in, I’m feeling great about the company and my decision to join.
Spending my days in meetings with therapists has given me perspective on the ways in which the societal conversation around mental health is and isn’t serving young people, and all people. There seems to be a fairly limited vocabulary available to us and no real general consensus on who should participate in or audit the conversation. Should we get everyone talking? Defer to only those suffering mental illness? Urge people to see a therapist before speaking out? Let the clinical experts be the ones driving the narrative? Whatever your predilections, allow me to enter the chat in good faith here, and challenge me where I miss the mark.
My ruminations on the questions above have pushed me to more deeply examine a watershed moment underway across sports right now.
Simone Biles. Naomi Osaka. Serena Williams. Marty Fish. Michael Phelps. Kevin Love. DeMar DeRozan. Karl Anthony-Towns. Kayla McBride. Dak Prescott. Jonathan Drouin. Tyler Motte. David Freese. Joe Bryan. Danny Murphy. Stephanie Labbé.
With apologies to any I missed, these athletes have all in the last few years demonstrated a commendable level of frankness around their own mental health struggles. They’ve pleaded with us to understand them as human and fallible. They’ve discredited toxic sporting wisdom to always tough it out and suppress all weakness. Some knew they’d become lightning rods for taking bold measures to begin taking care of themselves, yet spoke up anyway.
Seeing individuals so squarely in the limelight reveal their mental health challenges goes a long way in normalizing the idea that mental illness can afflict anyone. Not to mention that it must come as a great relief amongst other pro athletes to have it affirmed by peers that doubts and anxiety are nothing to be ashamed of.
The question I’d like to raise though is whether having the most pervasive, familiar examples of mental illness in our public discourse be these athletes’ stories serves us all well. How effective have we been at validating that struggles outside the realm of elite athletic performance are worthy of attention, compassion and support too? Do we need to change our tact to convince skeptics and to convince ourselves that it’s ok to not be ok… even if you aren’t a world class athlete?
Don’t get me wrong - I don’t mean to discourage athletes going through it from sharing their struggle. I’m sensitive too though that asking each of them to henceforth carry the torch of championing mental health awareness at every turn could exacerbate anxiety and disrupt healing. Knowing, for example, that Naomi Osaka already dreads press conferences, what good is it subjecting her to inevitable grillings about her mental state and pressing her to offer advice on ways to cope?
Digressing momentarily, it’s a pet peeve of mine when people use sports clichés in the workplace unironically. I get the inclination to inject a bit more exhilaration into every day life, but in addition to excusing a lack of imagination and generally being quite bro-ey, these quips don’t mirror the nagging stressors, looming decisions and small joys of the daily grind particularly well.
I’ve joked before that male uptake of therapy would skyrocket if it was branded as “sports psychology”, but there’s a more valuable and transformational cultural shift I’d like to see happen. Let’s elevate the discourse around mental health concerns to be more versatile. Let’s push it to a place where it accommodates both somebody fending off the twisties mid-Yurchenko double pike vault at the Olympics and somebody fending off round the clock cyberbullying from a classmate, but does not lump the two together as though they are congruent.
Kagame, Set, Match?
The last time I wrote to you all, I expounded upon my friend Carine Kanimba’s fight to free her father Paul Rusesabagina from the clutches of Rwanda’s repressive government. On September 20th, over a year after his flight was secretly rerouted so he could be taken hostage, the heroic hotelier credited with saving 1,200+ lives during the genocide got confirmation of the inevitable: a guilty verdict on charges of forming and funding a terrorist group and a 25 year prison sentence. Barring foreign intervention from Belgium (where he has citizenship) or the United States (where he’s a permanent resident), that may be all she wrote for Paul. Or maybe there’s another way…
Hotel Rwanda hit theaters in December 2004 to widespread critical acclaim while Arsenal Football Club was at the peak of its powers. At that moment, the Gunners were fresh off an historic “Invincibles” season where Thierry Henry & co. stormed to the Premier League title, having gone 49 league matches without losing from May ‘03-October '04. In the ensuing years, they have sputtered, falling from slick passing, perennial title contenders to middling has-beens, clinging to relevancy.
Last April, in a move that reeked of avarice and desperation, Arsenal - then sitting 10th in the table - joined the five other richest English clubs in a secession plan to form their own European Super League, scheming to avoid sharing profits and to guard against the risk of not performing well enough to qualify for the lucrative UEFA Champions League competition every year.
Were it not for mass outcry, demonstrations and even pitch invasions from those meddling supporters groups, they probably would have gotten away with it. Nevertheless, the lack of true repercussions and the continued flow of capital in the game towards petrostate financed superclubs has left many fans, myself included, feeling reaffirmed in our disillusionment. Perhaps this dearly beloved game has been corrupted beyond repair by the same global capitalist forces propelling rampant inequality everywhere.
I haven’t given up just yet though.
As political polarization chips away at the concept of nationalism as we learned it in school, I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to suggest that one is more likely to feel immediate affinity for a fellow fan of their team than towards their fellow countryman or woman. While I’ve seen little evidence to suggest that club owners should ever be trusted to do the moral thing, I do believe hundreds of thousands or millions of riled up supporters, united in their fandom and their distaste for club practices, are a frightening enough proposition to bully decision makers into bringing about change.
It’s not just the Super League that fan activism managed to curtail. Just last week, bowing to public pressure, the UK government agreed to outlaw betting sponsorships on the front of jerseys, meaning 9 of the 20 teams in England’s Premier League will need to find a new major source of revenue/sponsor to adorn their kits with. Enough fans had seen gambling addictions ruin lives of loved ones to take a stand and demand better from clubs supposedly meant to reflect their community values.
Side note: as sports betting increases its domestic footprint in the US, aided by the efficiencies of fintech, I’m nervous about the prospect of a widespread gambling addiction problem amongst American men in particular in 5-10 years. Time will tell.
Which - I appreciate your patience - brings me back to Arsenal and to Rwanda. In 2018, Rwanda’s government-run tourism department entered into a £10 million annual sponsorship deal with Arsenal to stick a “Visit Rwanda” sponsorship patch on the left sleeve of every jersey. As the brilliant detectives among you likely already guessed, President Paul Kagame is a lifelong Arsenal supporter.
I’ll leave it to you to judge whether the deal is a savvy soft power marketing play (Rwanda saw an 8% uptick in tourist activity in the first year of the sponsorship) or an unethical waste of government funds (Rwanda ranks 174/193 in nominal GDP per capita). Either way, Rwanda has not featured so visibly in global pop culture since Hotel Rwanda’s release. It’s Kagame taking back the narrative.
I should confess that I own a “Visit Rwanda” emblazoned Arsenal jersey. I succumbed to early quarantine boredom and chased the cheap thrill of a heavily discounted online shopping deal. As I’ve come to connect the dots though between Kagame’s calculated whitewashing and the mockery of justice surrounding Paul Rusesabagina’s arrest, that kit hasn’t left the closet.
Western governments might not come down heavy handed enough on Kagame, but what if Arsenal fans did? Victories on the pitch have been hard to come by (…wrote this section the day before their North London Derby triumph and Tobin Heath’s debut for Arsenal Women in a 5-0 romp) and attempts to oust the ownership group unsuccessful. Could fans leverage their purchasing power and refuse to buy kits that abet repression until the club’s hands are tied? Could fans be trendsetters in reclaiming global football’s power to influence politics? Could fans be what eventually grants Paul Rusesabagina a chance at a fair trial?
I don’t know, but it seems like a place to start.
