I can try
Where do we go from here? Where do sports and pro wrestling and our other silly hobbies fit in?
Above an end cap display of Legos at our local Target, there is a large slide with a large Lego man sitting on it. The slide sits atop some kind of tiered stand that builds up from the end cap. The slide nearly touches the ceiling.
My two-year-old daughter wanted to go down the slide. She looked up toward the ceiling. "Dad, do you see the yellow slide?"
Me: "Yes, I see the yellow slide. It's too high. Too high for you."
Daughter: "I can try."
And she tried to climb up the end cap.
In today's Kanefabe newsletter
In a distracting past week or so, I have been chipping away at a post about the pitching in the World Series. It's almost done, and it was my plan to run it today. In a predictable response to an unpredictable development that unfolded Tuesday night, I lost heart to finish that post (for now).
More so than usual, this one might be about wrestling and sports, at least occasionally, but it's not really about wrestling and sports. On we go.
More than a bit scared, though
"Everyone is a bit scared," said the horse. "But we are less scared together."
- The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
If you are among the many people starting your Thursday sloshing through a soup of overwhelmed emotions, you are not alone. That's the only thing I can say for sure.
We might point to different feelings on the wheel of emotions, and we might feel them for different reasons, but we are all overwhelmed together. And as much as there might be fatigue in this sentiment after falling back on it in order to power through so many surreal moments of the last nine years, we have to come together.
We can be less scared together. We can try.
The run in
If there's a visual that might provide some levity, and an insight I can offer here in a publication that offers connections to professional wrestling, let me point to the classic run in.
It's a familiar trope in wrestling, and it's one that consistently delivers a burst of excitement. In some form or another, a good-guy wrestler will find themselves in trouble. Typically, this involves some kind of beatdown at the hands of one nemesis or, in many cases, multiple bad-guy wrestlers.
The babyface is outnumbered. They need help. In response, a fellow babyface runs down the ramp to try and make the save.
With what lies ahead, we'll all have our chances to run in for the save. Maybe without the fighting and punching, though. We have enough of that going on already.
It matters
There's an inclination for many people to say that, in light of recent events, nothing matters. Hate and cruelty and vulgarity just headlined an overwhelmingly successful presidential campaign. If that's where we end up, it’s easy to see how it feels like it doesn’t matter to do the right thing or advocate for something better.
It still matters. It matters to do our best and try to make things better. It matters to be kind. It matters to take care of our corner of the world, whatever that might be.
Maybe we cannot fix whatever the hell is happening on a larger, national scale. But we can do our part to take care of our community. Even if we cannot make sense of how, and even if we’re surrounded by the darkness of the next weeks and months and years, we can do that.
To that end, Jon Stewart said it well.
I’m not overlooking or sidestepping how scary this is. The stakes are overwhelming. This is about people’s lives. This is deeply serious. That’s also why this all still matters.
We can try.
Not really about sports
"Doing nothing with friends is never doing nothing, is it?"
- The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
I'm inspired here at Kanefabe by the frequent mantra on the Harris Football podcast. As he so often does, Chris Harris opened his show on Wednesday by saying that while he's there to talk about football, it's not really about football.
We need those things that provide a point of connection, a chance to come together and laugh and take a break from the serious business of real life. For example, the video I shared earlier of the classic pro wrestling run in featured a tag team called the Outrunners.
Go ahead and search for "Outrunners AEW" and treat yourself to a YouTube wormhole. Then we can come back here and talk about it sometime. Because we also need to try to take care of each other.
Sometimes that means support in meaningful and frightening moments. That's important.
And sometimes that means laughing about professional wrestling or debating a reality television show or talking about our fantasy football lineups. That's important, too.
I CAN TRY
My daughter was measured in her assessment of the ceiling slide at Target. She was calm, especially by two-year-old standards, as she showed off her growth mindset and suggested that she could try to climb all the way up there.
Things got a little more tense when she was trying to request a song from Siri while we were driving as a family in our minivan. It had probably been four or five failed attempts. I asked if I should tell Siri the song.
NO. That was the defiant response from the back seat.
I CAN TRY.
Maybe we don't need to add to the fighting, if we can help it. But some defiance is good.
WE CAN TRY.
Nobody gets to vote on that
I still have a mug that I purchased shortly after the 2016 election. I grabbed it Wednesday morning.
It contains a quote from Justin McElroy, one of the co-hosts of the My Brother, My Brother, and Me podcast (among other properties).
"I'm gonna wake up and keep trying to do good and so are you and nobody gets to vote on that."
I can try.
