Little Bit Closer

The Winnipeg Jets and Life Without a Plan

Graphic by Me. Photo unknown

Recently I’ve found myself struggling with these things I can’t control. These things that are out of my hands. Job boards and the black holes my applications go into. Artificial Intelligence and its twisted future in our world. Empathy fading away in a society that now, more than ever, seems so teeming with hate. The fact that I’m graduating. And it’s all changing again.

I love a plan. I love a plan and thinking about what’s next and what I am going to do before what I am doing is even done. Plotting, scheming, planning, is how I feel like I am in control, and everything is going to be okay, because I know what is going to happen next.

So when these things that these CEO’s and executives and people who have too much money and too big of heads— and no more life left in them to remember that they are human— say that I did not think were going to happen, that were not part of my plan, I do not feel okay. And I get lost in the web of these thoughts of whats to come. In this gray haze of incontrollable things, frustrated with the fact that all I feel like I can do is let these terrible happen. For I have no plan strong enough to organize what terrifying things are being forced onto us. It seems as though we are hardening into inhumane form. And I can’t help but fall apart.

Yet, its the human things that keep me together.

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My favorite album of the year is by a British singer-song writer named Sam Fender. It’s called People Watching and every track is better than the last.

The album touches everything about life. Laughter, love, grief, death, spirituality— the feelings of being alive as a human. Throughout these times of uncertainty I keep coming back to it, particularly the lines of Little Bit Closer.

I can't live under the notion
That there's no reason at all
For all this beauty in motion
I don't buy the deities spoke of
But in love, there's something to hold
And I get a little bit closer to it

Despite believing in God these lyrics connected with me so deeply. And help explain those inexplicable, beautiful moments— those ones I often think come from a higher power. Maybe it’s love, maybe it’s God, maybe its pure luck and maybe its all of them. But there’s no way, that its not something. Something that only humans and the powers flowing through us can feel and make, and make each other feel. Nothing a chat bot or a generator can do. But only something that can a human understand.

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On Sunday night the best thing in sports was happening times two. Game 7. Everything every sports fan dreams of, as long as it is not your team playing.

And even though the Warriors-Rockets contest was a compelling case, by 3rd quarter it was over, so the attention turned to the ice and the #1 seeded Winnipeg Jets vs the #4 St. Louis Blues. The game was in Winnipeg, and the teams were in a hand-to-hand combat dog fight with each other (not literally) the whole night.

I’ve never been much of a hockey person, even in the playoffs I found myself riddled with frustrations and about the lack of scoring, the lack of flow, and seemingly lack of a plan. Everything, everyone, always seemed to be thrashing in hockey. They seemed to start with concepts of plan— 1, maybe 2 consecutive passes would connect and it would start to move like they drew it up. Then, intercepted by a defenseman (!), or, better yet, they just missed the pass and the puck went flying into the boards (!!). Or my personal favorite— when they just throw it into the boards and hope for the best (!!!).

I love basketball because it flows perfectly like a well oiled machine. When your team is good the passing is connecting like magnets and everyone seems to be moving as one. Poetry in motion. I was watching the #1 seeded hockey team in the National Hockey League and EVERYTHING WAS FLYING EVERYWHERE. Passes connecting? Maybe 3 consecutive if you lucky. Interceptions? Seemingly every other possession. Magnets? Definitely turned off. These men were operating on instinct, skill and adrenaline. Pure madness.

Yet this time I found myself compelled despite the chaos. Compelled because of the chaos, it was game 7 after all.

So by the second period I had declared to my sister that I had wanted the Jets to win because, what else did they have in Winnipeg? And St. Louis just won the Stanley Cup (don’t say 6 years is that long ago). And they were at home and everyone was actually wearing the shirts the graphic designer made (slay). And (of course) they were name twins with my New York Jets.

Regardless of my allegiance, they were trailing since the 1 minute mark in the 1st period and down by 2 goals in the 3rd. They did not seem to get the memo that I had thrown my support in their favor, and spent entirety of the contest thrashing from behind. So by the 3rd period, down 2 goals with 5 minutes left to play, it looking like the only thing that could save them was the help of a hand from God, and their namesake wasn’t often looked at kindly by the Big Man.

With approximately 3:00 left in the 3rd quarter they pulled goalie Connor Hellebuyck and opted for the extra skater. This seemed to please someone, somewhere, because soon enough the Jets scored with 2 minutes left.

It was now a one goal game, and as the clock ticked the pace got faster, the passes got sloppier and the checks got harder. Frantic, almost rabid like energy enveloped these players as they poked and prodded their sticks toward the black cylindrical puck as if it was arresting on the operating table. As if they were fighting for their life.

Then 7 seconds, 6 seconds, 5 seconds. Then miss, after rebound, after miss. Then Ehlers, to Connor to Perfetti. Then the tears I didn’t know I had welling in my eyes.

And suddenly I was crying watching the Winnipeg Jets game.

And the headphones on my ears were singing the words of Sam Fender into my mind:

This inexplicably indescribable thing. This horribly messy and chaotic beauty in motion. With seemingly no rhyme or reason but just firing every last shot at the opposing goalie. These men scoring against all odds. An act of God, a stroke of luck, and all the hope in the world was all they needed. 3 seconds. Despite the battle in the corner, the miss after miss after miss, somehow, a puck in the back of the net, feet jumping in the air, and cheers of thousands cladded in white.

Maybe its okay to not always have a plan, because despite the lack of one, you can still win. Maybe its okay to live amongst the chaos, because you can experience the feelings of being human— of sadness and love, of crying and laughing. And maybe its okay to not have it all figured out yet, because every day, you will get a little bit closer.

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