Ode To Missed Perfection

Indulge me, please, in a more personal entry to this blog. It is late Tuesday evening, two days after the Super Bowl, where my New England Patriots lost to the New York Giants. And I remain in a funk that has not yet been shaken over this entirely unexpected outcome. So I must ask myself “Why?”

The Giants legitimately earned their victory. There was one key to their chance, which everyone acknowledged going in: for any chance to win, they had to stop the mega-talented New England quarterback, Tom Brady. And they did. They took the gamble no other team had attempted, and threw every defensive thing they had at the quarterback, risking being burned and defeated by “the one big play.” But they succeeded. Eli Manning may have been selected as the game’s MVP, but that was a mis-call. The MVP was the collective Giants defensive line, who rose to a challenge and pulled it off. They are where the accolades should go.

The Patriots deserved the win. But they were not able to earn it when they needed it. They deserved a better end to a spectacular season of record-setting performances. The awards and records will be there for awhile, deservedly so. But to end it with that particular loss, that particular way, seems so wrong. I cannot possibly imagine how those 50+ guys must still feel at this moment; how many “should haves” and “if onlys” have been replayed in their minds over and over. My own imagination has certainly been on continual replay these past days, and it wasn’t even my game to play. So I can only commiserate and empathize with their all too human feelings from a distance.

I think perhaps my personal unending attachment to this loss reflects my disappointment in seeing excellence, if not perfection, go unachieved. We collectively came so close to seeing something that has been significantly missing this past decade: a demonstration of excellence that is all too rare, and is done on a scale that is sharable by the collective many. Few opportunities present themselves for such uplifting reaffirmation of human potential. In my lifetime, there has been the “greatest generation’s” accomplishment in Europe and Asia in 1945; stepping onto the moon in 1969; the fall of the Berlin Wall; the end of apartheid in South Africa; the indelible image of one man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square in Peking. Various moments in sports and the arts have enhanced our sense of shared culture, such as the Olympic hockey “miracle on ice” victory at a similar time of great emotional need in America. Moments not just of excellence achieved, of arriving at a place well beyond expectations, but doing so in a way that invites millions of people to share in it together. Tiger Woods is unarguably the greatest golfer today, perhaps ever, with a string of accomplishments; but millions of people are not joined in together watching him on the 18th green.

That is the opportunity we have missed. With all of the cash rewards and riches flying around some of us, we nevertheless live today in such a time of mediocrity, missed opportunity, minimalist goals and divisive ambitions. Yet every now and then something is needed to remind us how far human beings can reach in certain rare moments. We have need of that reminder these days; I am saddened that we did not get it. So we can only hope yet again, “wait until next year.” Even the Red Sox finally won, for all of us.