As millions of other people in this sick, sad world of ours, I follow in the footsteps of Winston Churchill. Am I a charismatic leader who overcame the Nazis and a lisp? Am I a defiant showstopper with a knack for draining “native” rebellions of their energy and whiskey bottles of their contents? No, no, no. I’m only depressed.Watching the Premier League is not exactly an orthodox way of treating a bout of depression. I can’t, however, afford a counselor. Pills are known for their tendency to cause lethargy. Star of BBC’s resurrected and resplendent “Doctor Who” series, David Tennant, refuses to make house-calls. And so, I am forced to self-medicate.
One of the more obvious ways in which the Premiership can inspire one to crawl out of bed in the morning and do the things that the spoiled brats with normally-wired brains do, is the sense of belonging it inspires. When you are depressed, you do not want to feel alone (alone with mounds of chocolate, alone with sharp objects, etc.). And as the dark universe stretches out in infinite directions all around you, it’s a comfort to know that there are, out there, small pockets of warmth: pubs full of like-minded individuals spilling beer down the front of their shirts and yelling rude things at the television.
Equally obvious is the question of what exactly should happen to a depressive if his or her team decides to make like Saudi Arabia in the 2002 World Cup and give new meaning to the phrase “exterminated by an army of particularly cranky Daleks”? Thing is, cheering for one’s own club can be less cathartic than simply raining down mockery and abject hate onto one’s rivals. The “I was named for Ronald Reagan and it shows” look on Cristiano Ronaldo’s well-moisturized face is more than just a consolation prize to anyone whose team is slipping in the rankings. There is something marvelously positive about focusing on the negative aspects of a football club.
So, if your heroes are getting scissored (not in a good way) and red-carded and otherwise put upon, you can turn an ugly situation to your advantage by simply remembering that within the traveling circus that is the Premier League, there is plenty more to laugh about than to cry about.
Everyone knows (or should know, considering the appalling state of public education) that exercise is particularly useful when it comes to combating depression. Exercise both stimulates the ailing brain and provides a healthy glow, ensuring that the reflection staring back at you from the mirror is not as pallid and bleak as you may suppose. A Premier League fan’s exercise arsenal includes an impressive range of routines, among them:
Jumping up and down like a male baboon in front of a rival male baboon.
Banging head on wall, table, floor, or other readily available surface.
Tunelessly roaring out the team’s song, or else tunelessly roaring out dirty variations on the opposing team’s song.
Nervous chewing of one’s own hands and feet…
…And other forms of energetic behaviour, some of which I won’t go into in case children are reading.
Heterosexual women, meanwhile, often grossly overlook the Premier League’s extensive catalogue of Objects to Covet (otherwise known as Hot Football Players Who Are Actually Human, But Frighteningly Easy to Objectify Nonetheless). The OC’s come in all colours, and with all sorts of hairstyles, although not in all shapes, due to the fact that the only real shape that’s allowed is FIT. Aesthetic gratification is a known antidote to the depressive’s pervasive notion that the entire world has gone grey. And if the Hermitage and Louvre are not exactly down the street (and even if they are), the Premier League provides plenty of indulgence.
Speaking of aesthetics, it is no accident that football is referred to as “the beautiful game” by His Legendariness Pele. The Premier League, meanwhile, is a kind of Supermodel Parade wherein football’s beauty is concerned. The money and prestige and tradition that form the foundation of the Premier League as it is today ensures that some of the world’s best players (yes, yes, even Cristiano Ronaldo) dominate the pitch. These players can send a ball flying straight into the goal from the most unlikely locations, producing some of the most geometrically poetic replays. Of course, the likes of Virginia Woolf and, more recently, Zadie Smith, have produced some divinely inspired writing on the terror of beauty, but that in itself is a kind of antidote to depression. Terrible beauty inspires action (see exercise routines above, for example), while depression is characterized by long bouts of inaction. And so, the depressive has a chance to, however briefly, get off the couch (and plop back down again with the umpteenth can of beer, not that anyone is counting).
The alleviation of symptoms is does not exactly constitute a cure. While Churchill may have seen the end of the Third Reich, he did not see the end of depression; men and women who have reached a certain stage in their emotional development have to admit to themselves that depression comes back again (much like mass-murdering dictators spring up across the world with relative regularity). But if depression swings around for more action, so does the Premiership. And in the short, but sweet span of human life, some things are sweeter than others.