the Joy of Losing

The tradition on American Thanksgiving points to what professional sports is supposed to be, and I pray, nothing more. This point came to me while I sat on a bench overlooking a small valley lamenting my poor sports luck in 2011, and again when I saw the Canucks live against the powerhouse Penguins and Jets in the last two months.

But first, some context.

I entered a monastery in Southern California in 2010 so you can understand the sinking ironic feeling, when I discovered that not only were my beloved Vancouver Canucks good, they were dominant. In my then 27 years of being a fan, my beloved Canucks reached the Stanley Cup only once, in glorious 1994. In fact, there had been so many years of frustration, it is not immediately clear to me if they had even got past the 2nd round of the playoffs in all those years. 

The other teams I follow performed somewhat similarly in the following years: the Pittsburgh Steelers ended up in another Super Bowl; the Notre Dame Fighting Irish reached the BCS National Championship; the Pac-10 turned into the Pac-12, and somehow, several teams ended up taking center stage in the national championship; the Seattle Seahawks created a dynasty-worthy team, and even my high school won the provincial championship after being a perennial contender.

It was humorously frustrating; I leave the world, and all of a sudden, the teams which I followed all flourished in some way.

I realized, however, that what I truly love about sports, is not the sports themselves: it's the camaraderie; it's the sharing of joys and sorrows seeing teams succeed or fail; it's the discussion and playful argumentation of who's the greatest; it's the instant discussion starter, the emotional connection and identification. It was, simply speaking, not merely the sports themselves.

Being back in the world has allowed me to follow sports again, and not ironically enough, the Canucks are back to being terrible. But winning isn't what's desirable: it's going through the wide arrange of success and failure with with those happy enough to share it with you.