“Tenacity is a gift.”
A wise man I know said this to me not long after I first met him. And this phrase kept popping in my head as the Olympic gold medal game between the American and Canadian teams drew ever closer and my anxiety about it all spiked. I was nervous, truly, because four years before I had not been.
At that time, I devoured every televised Olympic hockey game from Sochi, whether the United States was playing in it or not. What I couldn’t watch in real time, I dutifully taped. And the women amazed me.
I had seen one woman play before, the only woman in a twice-weekly game that was essentially a beer league with guys who had played their entire lives and often later on college scholarship. In other words, they were a very good beer league, and she more than held her own with them.
Seeing women on teams playing against each other was a revelation. Because the rules for body contact in women’s hockey are different—hitting technically is not allowed, although contact by accident is often unavoidable and sometimes deliberate—the women’s game seemed so much faster, the flow smoother, the women more focused and graceful. In other words, they were fierce—and I was hooked.
Everybody at the office knew about my hockey fixation, and my increasingly bleary-eyed arrivals courtesy of the never-ending Olympic hockey broadcasting underscored my commitment. So, I was not surprised when a co-worker asked me: “So, did you watch the women’s gold medal game yet?”
He seemed uncharacteristically solemn when he asked me this, something I only really noted after he changed his manner in response to my breathlessly excited response, “No! I taped it. I am going home now. I CANNOT WAIT!”
“Oh,” he said with a forced smile. “Then enjoy the game. Talk to you tomorrow.”
As I drove home, I wondered a bit what he knew that I did not. However, doubt dissipated as I settled in with the critters and watched the United States control the play and head toward a certain gold medal. They owned the ice. They had it.
Until they didn’t. I wish I could have explained to my confused animals why so many people on the television and the lone human in the room were crying. I was stunned and numb for days. My co-worker offered heartfelt and awkward commiseration.
With that inexplicable game never far from my mind, I watched the Americans lose in their first 2018 Olympic meet-up with Canada. Others in the room were less concerned. As we planned the viewing party for the gold medal game, I was having flashbacks to 2014. My fellow hockey enthusiasts’ emotions ran the gamut from nervous breakdown to cool confidence. My mom stayed up to watch.
On a conference call early in the day, I told new co-workers: “Tonight the game starts at 11 p.m. But you should watch it anyway. It will be one for the ages.”
And, it was.
For what I didn’t fully realize about tenacity being a gift is that being able to persevere through failures, setbacks, and disappointments often does come from an otherworldly source outside the possessor, a sense of peace and confidence that hard work and fortitude support, but do not create. When tenacious, an individual is tapping into a determination that seems innate, a blessing, a gift so big that it springs forth naturally and without question.
But the gift is even bigger. For seeing the tenacious persevere, witnessing the bereft rise above pure devastation gives to the rest of us an idea that it can be done and sometimes, if we are really paying attention, even the way to do it.