I guess we can: The importance of swagger

I don't know why clutch Ray Allen three-pointers tend to inspire me to write. It's like watching the same movie time and time again, but without losing even a trace of the thrill you get the first time you saw it.

Watching the C's tonight, I found my mind straying away from the game and toward dark contemplation of the team's future.

Garnett apparently out for the playoffs, perhaps never to be the same again. The defending champions precariously close to an 0-2 deficit in the first round, set to board a plane for the hostile territory of Chicagoland.

Last year's impossible dream, it seemed, had run its course, the rude awakening of life and circumstance bringing the wild ride that has been the Big Three 2.0 era to a screeching halt. Hell, the Bruins had just gone up 3-0 against the hated Habs, and you know there just isn't that much good karma to go around one town.

I guess the point is that I came closer and closer to abandoning my faith each time Ben "Roaming Hands" Gordon drained another impossible basket, each time I buried my face in my hands and groaned after a blown chance or a foolish turnover. I, and the Celtics, were at the tipping point, that place at which confidence and swagger - if not salvaged, if not furiously maintained - irreversibly give way to the certainty of defeat.

It's a point we all reach at certain times, an inevitable part of life. Sometimes, it comes suddenly. Sometimes, it's a grind, something we see developing in the distance. We rarely have control of the circumstances that lead us to that tipping point, but we always remain in command of our response.

I suppose that using the travails of a professional basketball team to illustrate life's struggles somewhat cheapens this, but in a way the basic meaninglessness of sports is uniquely constructive in this discussion. Even in spiritual contemplation, I've always found the concept of life's basic meaninglessness as liberating, not because of some nihilistic outlook but because that perspective validates the human concept of goodness and morality.

If there is no underlying meaning or purpose, then what we do - what we choose to become - means everything.

In a world of dogma and extremism and narrow minds on all sides, we often fail to see the humanity of others. Indeed, we often fail to see it in ourselves. It's a planet that's growing ever smaller, one of limited resources and suffering and heartbreak.

One can't help but feeling sometimes that we're nearing our own collective tipping point. I see a society that has grown so insular and contented, yet also so paranoid and reactionary, and can't help but wonder if we're truly ever going to be ready to tackle the mammoth problems that confront us in this new century.

The American Century is gone, and the history of the next 100 years has, of course, yet to be written. We stand at a crossroads, at the precipice of what could be a steep fall into the unknown.

Perhaps we've already crossed the point of no return, or perhaps our fate is out of our control. But if I've learned one thing from Jesus Shuttlesworth, it's that you can have an O-fer for the night and still come up with the game winner if you just make sure to never lose that swagger.

(And to remember that, in the end, it's just a game.)

godspeed,
dk