As I went to meetings in Boston today, all I heard around me was the buzz over Tiger Woods. Driving North, I called Kelly McGann Hebert, who is as knowledgeable about human behavior as I aspire to be about politics. On the radio, it was all Tiger, all the time. A sitting president returns with a Nobel Peace Prize, health care advancing quickly, climate change, as escalation in U.S. treasure abroad.
"All this and more after the break. But first, Tiger Woods and the growing number of women."
So what is that "human condition" Ms. Hebert keeps bringing me back to. The wiki community informs us, humans "are aware of the passage of time, can remember the past and imagine the future, and are aware of their own mortality."
Not a golfer, I remember the day the world stood still to watch as Tiger Woods won his first tournament without his father standing by his side, tears streaming down his beautiful cheeks. The poster boy for the pain of the human condition. The pictures of a boy born with a golf club in one hand, his father's firm hand in the other.
Now again, the world is paralyzed by another aspect of the human condition, played out through Mr. Woods. Yes, we are in a global recession and a war. Yes, jobs are being lost as we breathe. Yes, people around the world are starving and dying right now. And for those of us lucky enough to possess instruments of communications, we are again stopped in our tracks by Mr. Woods and the human condition, unable to turn away from the shared experience that defines every one of us, and hoping it is not ourselves we are watching on TV.