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00:00:01
You Pick a Side, But Not Everyone Supports Your Team
50 Plays7 months ago
In this episode of Wandering the Wild Mess, I dive into the intense emotions of rivalry, identity, and the biases we bring into life. What started as a playful night cheering for her University of Utah team against BYU turned into a surprising reflection on why we’re so fiercely attached to being “right” and why some people cheer against us for no real reason at all. She explores how, like football rivalries, relationships can feel like battlegrounds when two sides don’t see eye to eye. Heather brings humor, tequila-laced honesty, and real talk on embracing differences without letting external opinions ruin our vibe. Join her for this relatable take on navigating life’s conflicts with grace, even when others try to root against you.
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Transcript
The Holy War Rivalry
00:00:01
Heather Morgan
And it was time for the Holy War. Who's going to win? Welcome to Wandering the Wild Mess with Heather Morgan. I am so happy that you're here.
00:00:16
Heather Morgan
All right, y'all. So today I have to talk about something that I feel like is wildly timely, and not really something I really talk about ever, but there was just such a reflection that recently came to me. um Weirdly, during the University of Utah BYU Holy War, which we would say um back then,
00:00:42
Heather Morgan
ae football, college football game, who would have known who would have known that I would reflect so much on life and just things that we face over a college football game. But let me let me get into it with you. So obviously, the red versus blue game, University of Utah versus BYU is not the only red and blue that has been playing any sort of game.
Conviction in Choices
00:01:12
Heather Morgan
Okay. And I know our parents say we're not supposed to talk about at the dinner table. What is it? Politics, money, and religion. And I've already talked about a religion a little, so I guess we're thrown in politics. And although I don't want to speak anything specific, I just want to talk about the idea that we have around us being right in life.
00:01:38
Heather Morgan
And when we pick a side, we just genuinely think that we're right and we really don't want to hear anybody else's. And I think that that's like an interesting perspective because that in everything in life, relationships, marriages, friendships, there was so much I saw that I was like, ah, my anxiety was on like level 1200 plus. And I realize everyone just has these really strong opinions, but you know, and I don't know the whole story of how they came to those conclusions, but it's, it's kind of like an interesting psychological thought. And I realized that in a marriage, like I was in, when two people have a completely different perspectives, that's why it's just so hard if they're not open-minded at all to allowing the other person to have their own opinion or thought.
A Utah Fan in Tennessee
00:02:38
Heather Morgan
And
00:02:40
Heather Morgan
The story I'll tell is one of me cheering for the University of Utah in a bar in Tennessee. Now let me tell you, living in Tennessee, most people, I have had so many people, I guess, tell me they've never even met anyone from Utah.
00:02:58
Heather Morgan
So the likelihood that people really care about the University of Utah versus BYU game out here is like zero. So after the Tennessee game was over, we had the late game. I'm the only one that cared to watch it. I'm at this bar.
00:03:13
Heather Morgan
And I'm cheering on the University of my youth alma mater University of Utah. Like this is one of those games like this is the closest Utah has to like any kind of college football really rivalry. I mean, I've been to SEC games. It's totally different. Like we have nothing on that.
00:03:28
Heather Morgan
in utah i'm sorry we just don't it's just not the same but this game would have been one i wish i could have been back home for and this is like when you were a kid it's like you wore like the colors to school before their game weekend like okay i'm wearing my uts i'm wearing byu like that was a whole thing like it's a huge thing So anyways, this game's on. I'm finally feeling like, OK, a little bit of excitement at home for my own college football team to play this big rivalry. And even though our record's awful, we're not looking good this season. I'm like, if we win any game, this is the one. We're playing all at home like we want to be BYU, whatever. So I'm really cheering
Opposition for Opposition's Sake
00:04:08
Heather Morgan
on my team. I'm really passionate, right? I'm passionate that we should win this game because I want us to win.
00:04:15
Heather Morgan
So because I have loyalties because that's where I've spent. That's where I got my college degree, right? So anyways, I'm cheering. For the youths and there's a table of people to the to the right of me. And they notice that I'm cheering and they watch for a minute. Well, the next thing you know, BYU scores and they start cheering. They start cheering.
00:04:44
Heather Morgan
I can tell you that table of people did not know anything about BYU, nor were they likely had any, anything to do with BYU. I could tell that they just wanted to cheer against me and not me specifically. I they just wanted to cheer against whatever team I was going for because I was the only person in the bar that cared about the game.
00:05:11
Heather Morgan
And I think about that because I've watched sports and been a sports fan my whole life. Growing up, my parents, my mom is like a diehard jazz fan. And like, obviously, if you've ever been to an NBA game in Utah, like you don't want to go if you're the other team, like they're just heckling you. It's an awful experience. So I hear. But what I'm saying is people get so passionate about their team.
00:05:41
Heather Morgan
that they're like annoyed that anyone else could cheer. for like I'm literally annoyed. like Those people are cheering for by BYU. like Do they even know BYU? I even, in my tequila moment, even asked them, hey, do you guys even know where BYU is? do Do you know where it is? They didn't know. They didn't know. They didn't know. But they still wanted to cheer for BYU. And they had every right to.
00:06:11
Heather Morgan
without knowing a single fact or even where the school was located. They could cheer for BYU if they wanted to.
The Impact of Opposition
00:06:21
Heather Morgan
But I let it bug me. I let it and piss me off, actually. and But then I realized like, why do I care? They can cheer for whoever they want. And not only that, it was just a reminder that unfortunately in life,
00:06:40
Heather Morgan
people will cheer against you just to cheer against you. Like that's real. Like they didn't know me. I never even spoken to any of them. They just, whether it was to like, just for the fun of it, like there's no, no reason, no rhyme, just wanted to cheer against me. And I could have like,
00:07:04
Heather Morgan
let that ruin my whole night, which for a part of it, I was like, it I was like, no, University of Utah. Like, I'm literally in my head, like, who's this girl? I haven't had an angry feeling in a minute, but here I am trying to defend my college football team, and I'm getting annoyed at these strangers. And it seemed really silly at the end of the day. And the next day,
00:07:33
Heather Morgan
obviously the outcome of the game was far from what I wanted which kind of only added to my frustration about these random strangers just cheering against me and then don't worry don't worry even during it they kind of started reading a little bit about BYU you know just like oh yeah we do know Brigham Young University really really okay But at ah day like this is they have the it's a free country. Everyone's allowed to have their own opinions. They can go for BYU without knowing nothing, knowing no one that went there, not even knowing where the school was. Nothing. They probably didn't even know it was a Mormon school or Church of Judas Christ of Latter-day Saints. um But they could cheer for them.
00:08:23
Heather Morgan
and I guess what I'm trying to say here is that what I have seen over the last few weeks just really felt like a lot of our life, we think that the only possible way to being right is believing as we do.
00:08:52
Heather Morgan
Like everyone else out there no has no clue and we got it. We got it right. And I feel like we can think that, but sometimes we base our thoughts and then we take them as facts.
00:09:11
Heather Morgan
Instead of and I mean our thoughts and emotions, right? So our thoughts and emotions about a certain thing like my thoughts are like University of Utah such a better school University of Utah is this they don't do this, you know Do you know what they're doing at BYU? I could think all those thoughts if I wanted why I don't know seems like a waste of time, but I could but like Is it that big of a deal? I I can still have my opinion but not tell you you're wrong for yours. I could still just decide that I prefer the University of Utah and I'm glad I didn't choose to go to the BYU without it being such a difficult conversation.
Accepting Diverse Opinions
00:09:58
Heather Morgan
I realized I wanted to be that girl at the bar that's cheering for my team and paid no bother to the random strangers that wanted to cheer against me. Because I think at the end of the day, like that's the strength in having your own opinions, your own thoughts about things, but not allowing the external noise of other people telling you you're wrong or saying this or trying to force their thoughts on you change you from what you believe.
00:10:28
Heather Morgan
Now at the end of the day, like if these people actually liked BYU and they would have told me like a million good reasons why I should go for BYU, I'm the first to listen, but I know that my loyalty lied for me where I went, right? And sometimes those loyalties are just too, too much to overturn with other people's facts.
00:10:52
Heather Morgan
Most of the time when people pick a side, pick a football team, pick a color, the outside noise of everyone else isn't gonna change their mind. And especially not the negative, like, forceful, you shouldn't like them because A, X, Y, and Z. It's like the sit down conversations with your partner. When you say, hey, i I see that you see it that way, but here's where I'm coming from.
00:11:22
Heather Morgan
What are your thoughts on that?
00:11:24
Heather Morgan
And sometimes it's like, oh, i i I still don't see it that way, but I respect your opinion. I don't know if that seems too grown up for most people anymore. And I hope I'm wrong and that that isn't true.
00:11:42
Heather Morgan
that some of us can just realize that we all don't think the same way because we all were raised differently. We all had different experiences. We all have different loyalties. We all have different priorities and things that are important to us and to our families and to our friends. And so we make up our decisions about what we want from life or what we see as purposeful or what we see as a priority or meaningful.
00:12:11
Heather Morgan
based on our own experiences. And then we try to like project like, this is how you should feel too, because these were my experiences. And this is the conclusion I came to. And it has to be right.
00:12:21
Heather Morgan
Like, I'm sorry. I forgot everyone doesn't have to feel like me. Everyone doesn't have to think like me. Everyone doesn't have to have the exact same opinions and emotions about the things that I do. It's wild.
00:12:35
Heather Morgan
And I realized that every experience that we go into, and that's why they say there's three sides to every story, like yours, mine, and the truth, because I may see things one way and you see things another. And then there's somewhere in the middle where we both have some facts about the situation.
00:13:00
Heather Morgan
And yet we get really hung up on trying to convince other people to view the story the way we do.
00:13:10
Heather Morgan
I think about that also, and it ah reminded me.
00:13:15
Heather Morgan
that I have to let go of knowing that the story that I have in my head about why I left my life, my previous life, is going to be immensely different than the story from the man that I left.
00:13:35
Heather Morgan
That's hard for me. sometimes. And I am working so
Podcast's Purpose and Personal Growth
00:13:41
Heather Morgan
hard to let that go. I know that we don't see eye to eye on why it ended the way it did.
00:13:52
Heather Morgan
And that, I guess, has really been the piece that's opened my eyes to so many of the other things I've realized as I work to get the messy girl out of me. Because I started this podcast, Wandering the Wild Mess, because all I felt about myself and my life was that I didn't know what I was doing and I'm an absolute mess and everything's chaotic and I'm doing everything for the plot.
00:14:20
Heather Morgan
And the closer I get to healing, the less I'm accepting the messy girl. So when I got annoyed by this group of strangers cheering against me, the next day I woke up like, yeah, I don't really like how that girl was.
00:14:43
Heather Morgan
I don't really like how she cared and so much about strangers not cheering for the same team as her. And I think when you start to wake up to life realizing that everyone is not going to view things like you do, that people are going to cheer against you for no reason, that not everyone on this planet will love you for who you are or support you.
00:15:11
Heather Morgan
It's just not how it works as someone that's like a people pleaser and wants to be liked by people. I realize like I can't be liked by everyone because that's just not how life works.
00:15:25
Heather Morgan
And that sucks. Because I'm come on, what? I don't like that. I mean, even saying it out loud, I'm like, gosh, gee, really? And I see all these people show up, and they're like, I don't care. I love myself, and I don't care. And I'm like, gosh, how cool is that? But like it's kind of rude. It kind of sounds rude. You don't care about people. But then I'm like, it's not that you don't care about people. It's that you can't control how other people feel.
00:15:56
Heather Morgan
You can't control what things, what things matter to other people, right? Like they matter to them and they don't matter to you. There's just differences. Maybe me being messy is more likable because being messy means I don't have it figured out, which I don't still even though I'm trying to clean up messes. But being messy just feels a little bit easier for people to like laugh with and relate with in that. But I feel like at the end of the day, we all want to not feel like what kind of idiot was I last night, the next day. I feel like there's not one person that's like, I'm so glad I felt like an idiot last night and looks at their phone in the morning and they're like, what?
00:16:46
Heather Morgan
I feel like the mornings that you don't have to do that, you're like, yes, feeling good. Literally give me a million dollars. I'm like the coolest thing that ever happened to this planet because I don't have to worry about what text I sent or what I did or who I called or what I said after a couple of shots of tequila. It's just a vibe. I mean, all of us universally can agree that no one likes to feel like the next morning that they're like, does everyone hate me? What did I do?
00:17:18
Heather Morgan
And I felt like I hadn't seen that messy AF me in a minute. Probably was only like a week because I went to the Vols game when they beat Kentucky and ended up at Waffle House at 2 a.m. So like probably and may or may not have video FaceTime people at 2 a.m. unnecessarily. If you were one of them, I'm so sorry.
00:17:46
Heather Morgan
But I'm not saying I'm clean yet. I'm just cleaning up. I'm cleaning up. And that was a big self-reflection for me. So with everything going on in the world, if you're feeling like I get that if you just don't want to hear something from people, set your boundaries, right? Like if you don't like how it makes you feel, by all means, and you don't have to be friends with everybody.
Embracing Grace and Understanding
00:18:09
Heather Morgan
But like sometimes people that make you feel good in their life, people that you want to be around, if you have a difference in opinion about something, I don't think it has to be the end all be all unless you want it to be.
00:18:26
Heather Morgan
If you can really see that people make their decisions based on their own experiences, emotions, thoughts, feelings, and those are all not going to be the same as yours. They're just not. People live different lives. News flash. It's weird. I know. It's weird.
00:18:49
Heather Morgan
And I think it's great to just be able to have people in your life you can have that dialogue with. I have friends who have strong opinions on both sides of the, should I say the word, political party realm, very strong opinions. And I keep mind to myself, not because I don't wanna care about things,
00:19:16
Heather Morgan
But because my priorities and focus is different.
00:19:20
Heather Morgan
I don't even know, can I say that? I mean, but it's true. I guess I can just say my truth. And that's what we're all learning. In order to meet the right people that need to be in your life, to have the best experience in life where we're not like fighting strangers on the internet or like throwing the stuffing because that's the best part of Thanksgiving at the dinner table. Like maybe we should just be like, yeah, Jimmy has his opinion and so does Aunt Grace and we're good. And I don't know.
00:19:57
Heather Morgan
I can tell you that next time, if this happens again, I probably should just have ordered a round of shots for the BYU fans. And if they took it, then I know they probably didn't go to BYU. They probably didn't ever go to BYU. And I wouldn't even have to ask ah because they remember, Mormons don't drink.
00:20:26
Heather Morgan
So I should just buy them around the shots and then see. And then if they, they are, then they'll I get the shots back. It's like a win-win, you know? So, uh, anyways, that was my story of the Utes. I just wanted to bring this a little bit light to all of the heaviness that a lot of people were feeling on one side and the joy on the other. Like we won.
00:20:49
Heather Morgan
I mean, not the Utes. I mean, would I want to see someone driving around like, woo, BYU one. Thank goodness I wasn't in Salt Lake. Well, I would have had a minimum Provo. I don't want to talk about the game with someone. We should have won, but we didn't. Um, but that's just my opinion. And the weird thing is like ah opinion can not really be wrong or right. Cause it's just an opinion. It's not like a fact. It's not like a scientific, like here's the result.
00:21:18
Heather Morgan
So as you're navigating all the things, whether you're cheering cause your team won or you're over it cause your team lost, life is going to be full of times where things will work out and things will work out differently than you had hoped, but they'll always work out in your own life.
00:21:42
Heather Morgan
They will.
00:21:44
Heather Morgan
So I have to give one more little because I love this because this, like I said, this showed me how messy I was by me getting that annoyed. I mean, I'm sure that tequila didn't help. But come on, Heather, you can only blame blame tequila for so many instances in your life. At some point, you just need to get it together. So I read this today, you know, my favorite book.
00:22:06
Heather Morgan
And it says the way you impulsively react shows you cope or defend yourself in the past or shows how you coped and defended yourself in the past. If you are stuck in a defensive mode, your mind will view things through the fearful lens of survival.
00:22:28
Heather Morgan
The key to arriving in the present and breaking with the past is to slow down, breathe, think, and then act. and Instead of me getting all like, oh, why are they going for by BYU? They don't even know we're there. I could just be like, not everyone's gonna root for your team, Heather, and that's okay. And then carry on with my night. Cheering for my Utes, win or lose.
00:22:58
Heather Morgan
That would have been like the healed, healed Heather. But the messy one's still sticking around and she's like, okay, I'm gonna like make a scene.
00:23:09
Heather Morgan
But never again. Don't quote me, but kinda quote me. Kinda like hold my feet to the fire. I mean, I don't know who you are, but um yeah. So in life, just know we're gonna make messes. We're gonna try to clean them up. We're gonna figure it all out.
00:23:29
Heather Morgan
but just give people some grace. I mean, I'm sure they had some reason to cheer against me and that's going to happen throughout my life.
Life Reflections and Moving Forward
00:23:42
Heather Morgan
That's, that was the hard pill to swallow. That was really the takeaway is that when you're someone who is a people pleaser and just want people to see you for who you genuinely are and be like, I'm a kind person. What? Why are you cheering against me? Like that's not how it works.
00:24:01
Heather Morgan
That's not how it works. You just have to let people be who they are and then you can have them. You can let what they do and say bother you or you don't. I should have been unbothered.
00:24:17
Heather Morgan
I didn't know how to do that, but now it's shown me the lesson of, okay Heather, let's stop that all that.
00:24:28
Heather Morgan
So let's give a little more grace, understanding, and just genuinely know that nothing outside of you really matters that much. I don't care that they went for BYU. Go by BYU, so proud of you. My day goes on. Life goes on. This is what we got. The game is over. Tomorrow's a new day.
00:24:54
Heather Morgan
This was Wandering the Wild Mess with Heather Morgan. You matter.