What do you do in the moments when you know something special is happening to you? Like, in real time. How do you experience that euphoria and tingling of the senses while still soaking everything in? Do you even try? Or do you just sit on that surf board in the hugging sun and let the tidal wave wash over you – every part of that experience (even the potential sharks) becoming part of the rush?
Amazing, self-aware moments happen so infrequently, it’s sometimes hard to remember exactly what to do – how to experience them. What if these moments aren’t “moments” per se, but longer, finite periods of time? College, for example. How many of these moments do we actually all have? How do they change us? How can we recreate them? Do you want to? If someone asked you what the best actual moments of your life were, how many would you have? What’s the common theme between them? Can people you don’t know be involved? Can sports be involved?
I don’t want to go back in. Thinking about last year’s Wisconsin Badgers basketball season still hurts. It doesn’t seem right. Any fan of a forever-middling team that comes agonizing close to winning something they never win can attest to the pain. You go to a dark place. A place where you don’t know how to put things in perspective and feel better. A dark place of reflection where you go on deep, maybe cattywampus question soliloquies and make “Holy Duje Dukan is on the Sacramention Kings!” crazy analogies about tidal waves and sharks that would make Nigel Hayes put his head in his hands.
Coming so close and “losing” is really unlike anything else that happens in life. It’s somewhat similar to a break-up or funeral where you think about the good times while you’re still overwhelmingly sad. A sort of oddly content, yet sad smile that creeps onto your face when you’re by yourself in the quiet. It’s obviously not that, though.
It’s just sports, after all.
It feels a little weird investing so heavily in college sports, especially with negative stories about the big business of it all and stripper sex parties coming out seemingly every day (although I’m glad He Got Game was keeping it real). It’s easy to become cynical and only be swept away when One Shining Moment starts playing on that first Monday night in April.
I got into the journalism school at Wisconsin because of an entrance essay I wrote about a car ride with my dad that started with a sports conversation. I still believe the theme of it: Sports (and music, and art, and culture) are the gateway drugs to meaningful conversation and relationships.
I texted my family during every Badgers basketball game last year. I’d never done that before. I remember where I was for every NCAA tournament game, the most memorable being watching the Badgers beat Kentucky and advance to the Final Four at my parent’s house with entire family, including my grandma. She’d never seen that sort of enthusiasm and passion from my brother and I before. It didn’t matter the TV was 32” and SD. The family bonding was crystal clear.
A day after that game, my best college friends and I went drove down to Indianapolis for the national championship. We all get together now only 2-3 times per year. We went downtown to see what the Final Four “village” had to offer and saw a surprise Ying-Yang Twins concert in a tent on that Sunday night before the championship game. When “ah, skeet, skeet, skeet, skeet, skeet, skeet, ah skeet skeet…to the windowwwwww , to the walllll” started playing, we all just smiled. We knew instantly how special that moment was.
As we get older, we all realize the importance of the journey – that “winning and losing” in real-life are rarely as binary of outcomes as they are in sports. Think again about the moments you’d consider the best in your life. College. When your boss tells you you’re going to have a salary for the first time. The moment when the doctor says a family member has beaten cancer. That time you got engaged next to the ocean with Snowflake the dolphin watching. Watching the sunrise with close friends after 10 Ciroc and sodas. Different moments. Varying levels of seriousness. All special because they involved friends, family or people you care about – and because they all were the culmination of a journey.
Credit: Photograph by Art Streiber
The Badgers basketball team last year showed us all how to experience special moments. Through the wins and joy and brotherhood and commitment and stenographer-harassing press conferences they showed us how to appreciate something special in real-time while still working diligently toward a goal in the future. They embodied college – the ultimate journey of growth and learning. These kids taught us about college (and “moments”) like it without the benefit of graduating from it.
That’s kind of insane. We should appreciate that. I do. To every member of the 2014-15 Wisconsin Badgers basketball team, there’s really only one thing to say:
Thank You.