The Stanley Cup playoffs are providing me an escape from the strains of daily life. I recommend others find similar distractions.
To be glued to a smart phone or computer for the latest updates on politics or finance, to be obsessed with aspects of the big picture beyond one’s control, is to doom oneself to anxiety and all the negatives that flow from that.
I recall reading many years back that workers on assembly lines felt great stress, largely because they had so little control over their jobs. The line kept moving, independent of whether or not their particular task had been completed, or done well.
While the number of assembly line workers in this country is ever smaller, others put themselves on an emotional assembly line by feeling the need to be in a constant state of information update. You gain control by breaking that pattern.
For recent weeks – months? – my routine has been something of a rut. Monitor the political and investment world during business hours, accomplish many mundane tasks, get in a walk perhaps, or maybe write a blog post, then begin the evening by ripping through a DVRd episode of CNBC’s “Fast Money” (usually thus being able to distill that one hour show into 10 minutes or so of content that interests me).
It was then on to mixing viewing Fox News shows such as Jesse Watters or Greg Gutfeld, with slices of Real America’s Voice and various offerings from the assorted general entertainment cable channels.
Since the hockey playoffs opened the past Saturday, the evening routine is spent consuming the feast of first-round games, of which there customarily are three or four.
It is a relief to shift from hearing contradictory trade deal teases, or reports on the latest protests/acts of domestic terrorism, to admiring the brutal simplicity of playoff hockey.
Alex Ovechkin, the NHL’s all-time leading goal scorer, has scored some goals as Washington has taken a 2-0 lead in a best-of-7 series with Montreal, including the overtime winner in Game 1. But, what stands out is the way this ancient warrior is dishing out body hits at a prodigious rate.
Dallas-Colorado has been spellbinding, with Dallas managing to kill off a 4-minute double minor penalty late in regulation and into overtime, before winning Game 3 late Wednesday night.
Colorado captain Gabriel Landeskog returned in that game after an injury-related absence of THREE YEARS!
And so it goes in the Stanley Cup playoffs, offering intense hockey sprinkled with compelling story lines.
I recall a former news editor telling me years back that he just couldn’t understand how sports fans could get so worked up about something that meant so little in the bigger picture.
He unknowingly was answering his own inquiry. That so much emotional investment can be made in something that really doesn’t affect our lives in a significant way, provides a break from developing tunnel vision regarding the things that do.
Man does not live by bread alone.
Sam Ross Jr's site 