How to change a culture
How to change a culture
an obtuse lesson from the early days of Carey Price and PK Subban
Those were the days.
PK.
Carey.
Two young rookies full of promise.
They fit together perfectly.
Carey the collected. Positionally sound. Capable of the spectacular.
The flamboyant Subban. Showboating. In love with what he can do.
Together they were the future.
They were exciting.
At their most promising, they were not serious hockey players.
They were ‘a disgrace’ that made ‘a mockery’ of ‘the game’.
They had the audacity.
THE AUDACITY
To celebrate winning a hockey game by performing the satanic ‘triple low five’ at centre ice.
Pleasure?
Exuberance by twenty year old millionaires?
FOR SHAME!
No pleasure for you!
Eventually the critics wore them down.
They toed the line.
The triple low five disappeared.
And the world became a little smaller because of it.
So.
Don’t let the cops into your head.
Don’t let some critic’s moral offense to your little bit of fun sap the pleasure from your life.
Keep on playing.
Keep on with the triple low five.
Resist the narrative of conformity.
Enjoy what you enjoy.
Love what you love.
Once they control what you consider fun, they’ve got control of you.
Insist if you must.
Support people who are being silly.
Join them.
Exuberance and joy are ways of experiencing pleasure that can be infectious and alarming.
These feelings threaten us with liberation!
Engage with them at your peril, lest ye end up engaging in a problematic triple low five after a game at Le Centre Bell.
It’s like the old saying goes:
You can’t roller skate in a buffalo herd, but you can be happy if you’ve a mind to
Very nicely said! Thank you, Jim!
"Exuberance and joy are ways of experiencing pleasure that can be infectious and alarming."
We are judged by those who make society's rules; those people who are either in power or long ago dead. My children have grown up to respect traditions from my husband's influence. I constantly challenge them. "We don't have to do it that way just because some dead person did it that way." We have kept some traditions, because we enjoy them. I believe thinking about why we do what we do, and under whose approval, makes for independent, happier people.Teaching our children to not care about society's little check boxes of praiseworthy and damnable is a challenge. But oh, how exuberant life can be when you give yourself the power of approval over your own deeds.