The handshake line. One of hockey’s most stalwart traditions.
Spend sixty hard-earned minutes beating the hell out of each other, only to end up face to face with a rival of moments ago, wishing them well…and meaning it. That’s the simple beauty of this sometimes-brutal game.
At the professional level, you’ll see boys standing among men, and girls among women; sometimes bloodied, sometimes scarred, always looking steadfastly into an opponent’s eyes with an extended hand and a resigned acceptance of each other’s fate.
As people living in a digital world, we could learn a thing or two from the ceremonious handshake line.
I thought about this in considerable detail after watching my eleven-year-old stepdaughter move toward the front of her team’s line to shake hands with the opposing goalie. We lost 6–1. A lopsided affair in most circles.
But it didn’t matter. Not because the game didn’t matter. Not because apathy gave shape to the jerseys. That wasn’t it. I think it was something simpler.
The girls who lost knew they’d live to play again. And the team that won had the grace to know they could just as easily have lost.
Humility. It’ll get you through more than you realize.
Watching the girls shake hands and fist-bump their way down the line, I started thinking about a dear friend of mine. More a brother than a pal.
Recently, we’ve engaged in some robust back-and-forth discussions about the intricacies of the world. He sees things a little differently than I do. Which is good. Because I’m kind of an idiot.
See? Humility.
Kidding.
His name is Craig. I’ve known him for what feels like a lifetime, even though our time spent in direct proximity to one another was as brief as the changing of a season.
We went to basic training together. Boot camp, as it’s sometimes called. He went on to become a firefighter, serving in Afghanistan before transitioning to a municipal department and continuing his devotion to country and community.
I went on to become a paramedic, finishing six and a half years in the big green machine before I, too, found a municipal service to rotate into.
Geographically, Craig and I served east and west respectively. And I suppose there’s some poetic symbolism in that, because politically we also tend to oscillate somewhere between left and right of centre.
That’s what has led to much of our recent discourse. And God knows there’s plenty of ammunition to hurl around within the truculent landscape of modern politics.
But we keep things civil. Which, frankly, is a testament to how wonderful Craig really is as a human being. He truly is among the world’s best.
As long as I’ve known him, he has never been content with mediocrity or personal stagnation. That isn’t to say he can’t be still — of course he can — but he refuses to become one-dimensional. He constantly challenges himself. His beliefs. His assumptions. And often, in doing so, he faces the ire of the online rabble.
I can relate in that regard.
Talking politics or social issues might be the surest way to find conflict in contemporary life. And yet Craig has never wished me ill. Never.
We’ve had some absolute doozies of conversations where we’ve spoken past one another because the fundamentals of how we see the world can be so different. Even then, neither of us has fostered resentment or contempt for the other.
And as I thought about Craig while watching that timeless tradition on the ice, I started wondering why more people can’t operate this way. Why can’t we beat the hell out of each other — verbally, ideologically, sometimes philosophically — and then come together when the dust settles, shake hands, and accept that the person standing across from us may simply see the game differently?
Because that’s the part we seem to have forgotten.
The other person doesn’t necessarily hate you. They may not be stupid. They may not be evil. They may not secretly want the destruction of everything you hold dear. They may simply believe, just as sincerely as you do, that they are right.
And make no mistake: politics really is a goddamn game. A game with real-world consequences, yes. But that shouldn’t change our ability to remain civil when the whistle blows.
We can fight like hell for what we believe is right without convincing ourselves that the person across from us must therefore be wrong in every conceivable way. But increasingly, we seem to refuse that ability. Instead, we opt for ego. For contempt. For hatred.
Why?
Because someone thinks there are only two genders rather than a spectrum? Who cares? You don’t need someone else to agree with you in order to exist. And if you do, the battle may not actually be with the argument.
The person disagreeing with you is not automatically denying your humanity — and even if they are, they can’t strip you of it…unless you let them.
Refusing someone else’s worldview does not automatically make you cruel. Nor does it condemn them as wicked. Sometimes disagreement is exactly that. Disagreement.
The handshake line reminds us of something we seem hell-bent to forget: you can compete fiercely without wishing ill of the person standing across from you. You can disagree profoundly and still look someone in the eye when it’s over.
The world could learn a lot from those eleven-year-old girls I watched on the ice last night.
And you know what? So could I.
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