They were a juggernaut.
The Dallas Cowboys strode onto their home field with an air of confidence. All around them, 90,000 fans waved rally towels and roared.
Why wouldn’t they? The Cowboys had been straight-up dominant on this field for the better part of two years. They’d won 16 home games in a row, often by lopsided margins. Surely, another great performance was in the offing.
The game kicked off. And the Cowboys proceeded to get whooped.
The opposing team – the Green Bay Packers – found the end zone early and often. Meanwhile, the Cowboys offense appeared stuck in neutral.
Soon Packers players were taunting Cowboys cheerleaders, bragging into the lenses of TV cameras, and celebrating gleefully with the smattering of Green Bay fans in the stands. The Packers quarterback even mimicked a thunderbolt with his arms while standing on the iconic blue star at midfield.
Sitting at home in front of the TV, my expression was likely the same as the blue-and-white clad fans in the stadium. Steely eyed. Despondent. Stunned.
This team had shown so much more each week it had set foot on this field. And now, with the postseason upon us, this?!
We felt betrayed. And that stung most of all.
Et tu Brute?
These were supposedly among the final words of Julius Caesar before he was stabbed to death. Or at least William Shakespeare’s believed they were.
Brutus – or Brute, in Latin – was Caesar’s confidant. And when he saw his friend among the ranks of his assassins, the horror was palpable.
Caesar had not only failed to insulate himself from an imminent death. He had fallen victim to betrayal along the way.
And that hurt as much as any deep puncture to the ribs soon would.
Caesar’s experience was not unique, of course. Jesus was famously betrayed before his crucifixion. Benedict Arnold betrayed his fledgling country in the American Revolution. Even Bill Belichick once betrayed the New York Jets by showing up to his introductory news conference as the team’s head coach and instead announcing his resignation.
Such is the power of this emotion, that it’s written in the annals of history and widely recounted.
Betrayal, you see, has two elements that fuel its potency. It shatters the trust we’ve so carefully built in those around us. And it’s impossible to prevent.
Sure, we can put ourselves in position to avoid such an outcome. But the control lies in the hands of those we trust to protect our interests. And those hands can falter.
Ambition, stress, external pressure — these factors can compromise even the most trusted associates. In an unpredictable world, they can come and go with the wind. And in an instant, even those with the purest of intentions can find themselves gripping the dagger of darkness.
But building up our walls won’t do us much good either. Trusting no one lowers the odds that we’ll be turned on. But it also leaves us more vulnerable to the myriad dangers of the world around us.
It’s a brutal Catch-22. One we have no choice but to wrangle with.
It began with a broken bone.
My grandmother ended up in the hospital with a shattered hip. But unlike many her age with this injury, my grandmother hadn’t fallen to sustain it. And that left doctors suspicious.
Some follow-up testing brought the grim news to bear. My grandmother had cancer. Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, to be precise.
My grandmother’s cells were attacking her body from the inside – turning her bones to Swiss cheese. She would need to undergo chemotherapy.
I was 12 years old as all this occurred. And I remember being befuddled.
How could someone’s own body act like this? It all seemed so cruel and unfair.
Fortunately, my grandmother survived the treatment. She went into remission and remained in that state for the last 16 years of her life.