I really don't care about basketball.
In fact, I wasn't even sure who the Knicks were playing when I noticed the frenzy happening at MSG. Then, over the weekend, I watched approximately one million reels of the game-winning shot and New Yorkers going batshit crazy.
What a joy to watch humans of all races, creeds, and colors celebrate game five together. How cool that some dude thought to use his own projector and splash the game onto the building across the street. When the Knicks won, city blocks full of people lost their minds, dancing and singing Alicia Keys and Frank Sinatra tunes.
That's what community looks like. That's what ingenuity, cooperation and generosity look like. Nobody overcharged for tickets, it was free and spontaneous. Nobody grabbed the mic to trash Michelle Obama. And sure, there was a burning bus, (isn't there always) but mostly it was a whole lotta joy, celebration, and Jalen Brunson hugging his Dad.
Party on NYC! Enjoy the parade tomorrow.
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Our World Cup visitors are revelling too.
Have you seen the foreigners visiting Bucc-ees, Waffle House and Costco? Or British football fans chanting for the bullriders at the Fort Worth Stock Show? Or how about the fella dunking a hot french fry into a Frosty for the first time? These are American institutions and pastimes โ go hard my friends!
And don't forget the Scottish men in kilts raging around Boston, placing traffic cones like hats on statues. Bostonians are begging that someone detain them, so they can never ever leave us.
And check out Lawrence, Kansas
which was chosen by the Algerian National Team as home base for their World Cup bid. The Lawrence chamber of commerce worked for a year with experts in Algerian culture to ensure their efforts to welcome the team to Kansas were authentic and respectful. The University of Kansas Marching Band even learned the Algerian National Anthem, and Kansans sang it.
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There's a reason all this feels good.
When people are loving life like this, collectively, across boundaries we invent and believe separate us, it triggers a sociological phenomenon called Collective Effervescence.
Think of bubbles in a glass of champagne, but the glass is NYC and the Knicks brought the cases. Champagne is spraying everywhere. Strangers are hugging, and for a moment, the boundaries vanish. Knicks fans even stuck around afterward to help NYC sanitation clean up trash.
When we synchronize like this, it feels transcendent, and our nervous systems LOVE IT. After a punishing few years, with bad news on a loop, sports fans, Taylor Swift fans and newly-minted Waffle House fans are giving us an object lesson in staying bright and fizzy.
Need an example of collective effervescence without all the screaming? Here's one courtesy of Chris Martin and Jacob Collier that works the exact same way. It's worth the watch and feels like meditating, I promise.
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I want to believe we can hold this.
That no matter how much accusation, greed and terror are sown among us, our growing, collective effervescence is always greater.
When we're bright, inclusive and generous, even the haters have to admit that care and connection feel better than zenophobia and rage. (Well, some will never admit that.)
Maybe it sounds naive, but watching the neighborhood Knicks party, I have hope that as America walks through this painful reckoning โ for which someday we might actually be grateful โ a new day awaits her on the other side.
Why not? We're doing it right now, all over the country. Why can't we have a new dawn based on caring excessively for our neighbors and guests. Harmonizing with them. Honoring them. Enjoying each other.
To me, these pockets of joy, these glimmers that keep popping off, prove what Anne Lamott famously said:
Grace bats last.
And I would add โ sometimes loudest.
So stay bright and bubbly as often as you can America. And to all our guests from around the world, we're so happy you came.
We're doing our own form of collective effervescence this August 7-10 in the Rocky Mountains. Click here for more information on this girls glamping weekend we call Firegirl Friend Camp.
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