Paris Review – No More Tears, Brazil

 


"Those seven goals brought Brazil’s coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, the “worst day of [his] life.” I suggest copies of British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips’s recent book Missing Out for him and everyone on his team. Phillips wants us to live the life we have, and not the one that we imagine erroneously we might have had, if we were contenders. That route leads to a bad narrative, “and what was not possible all too easily becomes the story of our lives.” In all the soul-searching, all the talk of distress, disturbance, and suffering in Brazil, the scars that will never heal, the everlasting shame and so on, a useful perspective has been lost: Brazil didn’t lose a war with millions of dead. It lost a soccer game! Put the handkerchiefs away—or, as Phillips says, “our lived lives might become a protracted mourning for, or an endless trauma about, the lives we were unable to live.” Even with the home-field advantage, Brazil was never truly a contender to win this World Cup, and all the bells say too late. This is not for tears. Adam Phillips to replace Regina Brandão for World Cup Russia 2018? "

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Paris Review – No More Tears, Jonathan Wilson