Hypnosis teaches us that meaning isn’t found—it’s created—and nowhere is that more obvious than in the emotional rollercoaster of a hockey game.
Don’t get me wrong. I fall for it too.
You might remember that, in last week's email, I mentioned hockey.
No, Karl Smith, not an "ice hockey match", but a hockey game.
That’s about as Canadian as anything can be, once you take beavers, maple syrup, and red-jacketed mounted police off the list.
The Toronto Maple Leafs last hoisted the holy grail of winter sports, the Stanley Cup, fifty-eight years ago. Since then, they’ve mostly been lovable sad sacks, seemingly cursed by fate and allergic to victory when it counts.
It’s as if a shadow clings to the team. No matter how promising things look, no matter how many times we say, “This time it’s different,” they find a way to collapse in the most emotionally devastating fashion.
Take, for example, game five in their current series against the Florida Panthers.
After jumping out to a 2–0 lead in the seven-game series, the Leafs somehow managed to lose three games in a row. Game five wasn’t just a loss. It was an utter humiliation.
A complete breakdown on ice.
A couple of thousand die-hard fans, who had shown up full of hope, ended up booing their own team and walking out long before the final whistle.
Some were so frustrated, so completely gutted by the collapse, they actually threw their two-hundred-dollar Leafs jerseys onto the ice and left them there like abandoned flags of defeat.
It became the biggest sports story on the continent. The Florida Panthers, tough and fast and ruthless, didn’t just beat the Leafs. They dismantled them. And to make it worse, it was the same Panthers who had sent our goalie, Anthony Stolarz, to the hospital on a stretcher in game one. A disgusting elbow to the head. I can’t even begin to imagine the force it must have taken; especially since Stolarz was wearing a helmet.
These hockey players make the UFC look like a poetry-slam by comparison.
Game five sent Toronto into a full-blown meltdown.
Not at the Panthers, mind you. At our own team. The blue and white warriors had let us down again, and the city was not in a forgiving mood. Talk radio exploded with frustration. People called in furious and exhausted. A fog of disbelief settled over the streets, because we were all losers.
Meanwhile, in Sunrise, Florida, the vibe was entirely different. And that brings me to what I call the Mandel Theory of Sports Apposition.
It goes something like this. In any major sports conflict, the joy in the winning city rises in direct proportion to the pain in the losing one.
The greater the victory, the deeper the opposing city's sorrow. Their emotional energy balances out. One side exults while the other suffers.
Don’t ask me for data or a study. It just feels true.
In hypnosis, there’s a concept known as the Law of Apposition of Opposites.
Maybe that law applies to sports as well. Maybe the emotional scale must always tip in equal measure.
But here’s the real point.
It’s the framework we place around the game that creates the emotional storm. Without that framework, there would be no winners or losers, no triumph or despair.
We’re talking about a three-inch, six-ounce puck made of rubber. It slides across a polished sheet of ice while full-grown multi-millionaire adults in padded armor chase it at high speed.
And somehow, where that puck ends up during a sixty-minute game has the power to reduce a city of 3.5 million to stunned depressive losers, or elevate them into the euphoric bliss reserved for winners.
That puck has no actual power. We gave it its power. Because in the grand scheme of things, we decided this particular contest matters. We wrapped a framework of meaning around it. We made it symbolic.
So when the Leafs did the unthinkable in game six, coming back strong and obliterating the Panthers in their own Florida arena, the emotional scale tipped once again.
Suddenly, Toronto was back on top. A city of winners, reborn in joy. Sunrise, Florida, had become a city of losers, now in mourning.
In truth, the people in charge could have saved everyone a lot of effort and just flipped a coin before the series started. It would have been just as random, just as decisive, and far less stressful for all concerned. That coin toss could have determined the winning city as effectively as a wayward puck and a couple of disputed penalties.
But we didn’t want a coin toss. We wanted the agony and the ecstasy. We needed the battle. Because the framework made it matter, to two cities, two countries, and to millions of people across a continent.
And it raises the bigger question. What other ridiculous frameworks are we blindly believing? Where else are we assigning value or meaning that doesn’t actually exist?
Whatever the answer to that question, I’ll be on tenterhooks tonight.
I’ll be watching as either the Florida Panthers or the Toronto Maple Leafs become the champions of the moment.
One team and their city will be celebrated and showered with glory, and move on in the series. The other will be tossed aside, banished to that invisible heap of heartbreak we reserve for losers.
Not because any of it is truly important.
But because we all agreed that it is.
- Mike Mandel
P.S. Our Brain Software Syndicate community is perfect for people who want to master communication, but not become certified hypnotists.