In Canada, hockey is a beloved sport.  In Vancouver, it is a culture.  From the time I was a little girl, I recall my Dad and his friends cheering for the Vancouver Canucks.  I remember my parents organizing their social gatherings around hockey games.  Saturday evenings always began with a hockey game, most especially when Vancouver was on the ice.

As we grew older, we grew interested with our own friends.  We make meals and plan gatherings around the games.  Our little ones play and we make an effort to support their teams.  The game we have come to love is a finesse, not a brute game.  It is a competition of skill and thinking on one’s feet…. literally!  It is fast and hard-hitting and emotional, for sure.  There are teams who play with technical prowess and teams who play their power.  Most certainly, one is much prettier than the other.  On a personal note, I definitively love the technical finesse game versus the brute version.  All that said, what occurred in Vancouver last night had nothing to do with either version of the game.

At the end of last night, for a vast majority of people in the city of Vancouver, what was in the space?  What feeling was calling to be experienced?  Disappointment?  Deflation?  Sadness?  Were you willing – fully willing – to feel the sadness?  Your sadness?  Alternatively, did you choose to resist that sadness?  At some deep and perhaps unknown level, did we push sadness aside?

What might have occurred if we invited it in?  What might be possible if we were willing to fully experience the sadness in the space?  Would it have altered the frustration, anger, and ugliness we witnessed?  What did chaos in the streets tell us about ourselves?  What message can we take from it for our own life and its progession?

We witnessed large scale frustration, large scale anger, large scale ugliness expressed as disconcerting and discouraging city riots.  Is this what it takes to have us fully feel what we are experiencing?  Daily on a much smaller scale, are we unwilling to notice and fully acknowledge a general sense of sadness?

Are we adamant in pursuing The Defeat Of Sadness?

Will we relentlessly resist acceptance of this necessary and rich human experience?

Today I feel sad. It would have been enough to just be sad about a team’s collapse. Now, unfortunately, my sadness is about something much deeper and more disturbing than the loss of a hockey game.

What do you feel?