Saturday, November 15, 2008

Nothing Personal

I had the privilege to go watch the Vancouver Canucks play the Toronto Maple Leafs tonight (thanks for the pair of tickets my dad won in a draw from his company). Because of increasing ticket price, I haven’t gone to watch the Canucks much anymore, so the experience was much cherished.

The game itself was all right – too bad Luongo could not shut out the Leafs. But the most memorable thing came after the game when I was driving home:

At a red light, I saw fans standing on either side of the road. On one side is a group of Leafs fans still waving the Toronto banner, still dancing despite their team’s not-so-great performance. As these fans were chanting, several fans in Canucks uniform standing on the other side were giving them the thumbs-down. The two group of fans were jarring at each other, it was quite a sight.

I was expecting a fight when the lights turned for the pedestrians to go. The two groups met in the middle of the road, and, to my surprise, they were high-fiving each other, a couple even gave each other hugs as they crossed. Here we are, complete strangers, probably never to be seen again… unknowing observers like me may think that these were actually buddies that were just teasing one another half a minute ago…

Being Chinese, I think I can say this about many people of my race: we need to learn to not take things so personally. How many times have we seen, in politics in particular, where after a bitter campaign, people actually became enemies for LIFE? If we can only learn to separate and compartmentize our feelings… an event may be debated so heatedly that angry words are fired, but after the event, the person facing you is still someone who you can have a cup of coffee with… That is CLASS.

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