After a week like the one we just endured, I’m at a bit of a loss as to where sports fit in.
Tragedy has a way of leveling the playing field for a society—there’s a sports analogy for you, if you like. It exposes our capacity for senseless violence, punctures our collective sense of security and shines a light on the overwhelming majority of good, loving people who are more than willing to cast aside any and all differences in times of dire need.
And talking about it or writing about it—really, doing anything other than feeling it—seems cliched and insufficient. There’s something sports-like about that, too. Listen to any coach or player being interviewed after a big game. “We played hard, executed, played for each other,” et cetera. Listen to everyone who talked about Boston after the horrible events of last Monday. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, our hearts go out to the people of Boston,” et cetera. It’s not that these words are rote or meaningless. It’s just that sometimes the way we feel inside has only a pale literal translation. We use the best words we have, but they aren’t enough.
And yet, in the wake of tragedy, we yearn to release all those things we feel, all those things that boil beneath the surface when something awful happens to us, all those things we grope for when we struggle for the right words. I believe that some of the most seemingly frivolous things about our society, things like art and cinema and literature and even sports, are really manifestations of those things we feel but cannot say. They are the extended metaphor for all the heartbreak, yes, but also for all the joy and wonder and collective spirit that we cannot put into words.
Maybe I’m way off base here. Maybe this seems crass. Certainly a painting or a book or a stupid game is insignificant compared to human life. But it was a sporting event that brought all those millions of people to Boston that day in the first place. And it wasn’t that all of them love running or watching running or celebrating the winners of a long footrace. It was just that something—whatever it is in sports that makes us want to celebrate each other with each other. It was that something that the people who did this horrible thing were attacking and trying to destroy.
It’s also the thing we returned to a few days later, on Wednesday, when the Boston Bruins took the ice for the first time after the bombings. I don’t know the score of the game or who won or any of the truly incidental details. But I know that before the puck dropped an arena full of people loudly sang the national anthem, spontaneously joining together in one voice.
I don’t think which song it was matters any more than who won the game. All that matters is that with heavy hearts a grieved city stood up and sang together. Then they watched a game together. And they mourned the losses, hoped for healing and pledged allegiance to one another in the best words they had.