Miracle on Ice, 2.0
I still believe we can experience joy and wonder together.
That belief may feel out of step with the moment we’re living in, but it’s precisely because of how much we now experience collectively that the moments of shared joy feel so instructive when they appear. We have never been more technologically equipped to experience life together—watching events unfold in real time, from every angle, often accompanied by instant commentary and reaction. And yet, what we most often share is not wonder, but horror.
We collectively witness violence, repression, and loss—Minnesota, Iran, and countless other places—sometimes even as governments attempt to deny what is plainly visible. We see everything together. We rarely pause together. We bear witness, but we don’t often process. Collective exposure has become constant; collective meaning feels increasingly rare.
Still, collective feeling has shaped me.
I was too young to fully understand the images coming out of Vietnam as they aired, but I grew up in the long shadow of that reckoning. My first clear memory of collective grief came later—the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded.
A teacher from my high school had been a finalist for the “teacher in space” mission and was on site that day. Many classes in my school were watching the launch live. Mine wasn’t. Instead, a boy named Fred ran into our classroom mid-lesson and blurted out what had happened.
The words barely registered before the feeling arrived. A sudden, overwhelming sense of dread washed over me—something heavy and unfamiliar. I raised my hand and asked my teacher, almost reflexively, What am I feeling? I’ve never felt this way before.
He paused, looked at me carefully, and said, That’s grief. Then, after a moment, he added, I’m feeling it too.
That was the first time I understood that emotions could arrive collectively—that loss could belong to everyone at once, and that naming it together mattered. The tragedy itself was enormous, but what stayed with me was the recognition that this feeling wasn’t mine alone.
During my senior year of high school, I experienced something different: collective attention that resolved into collective relief.
When I was a senior in high school, the country followed the rescue of Baby Jessica McClure. For days, it felt as though everyone was watching the same story unfold—waiting, worrying, hoping. When she was finally pulled from the well alive, the relief was palpable. It wasn’t triumph exactly; it was gratitude. A rare moment when sustained attention resulted in a life saved, and it felt as though the entire country exhaled at once.
Two years later, I experienced collective grief again—this time not from a classroom, but from the center of it.
I was a sophomore at the University of California, Santa Cruz during the 1989 earthquake. I was in class on campus when the shaking started. Those of us raised in California instinctively dropped into the safety position we’d practiced since elementary school. But it quickly became clear this wasn’t a routine jolt. Ceiling lights fell. The ground rolled. The shaking felt as though it wouldn’t stop.
When it finally did, we went outside. The aftershocks kept coming. The campus itself showed little damage—newer buildings, built to code—but something had shifted. I skipped my evening lab and accepted a ride home from another student. As we ran across campus to her car, the aftershocks were strong enough to make the bridges sway beneath our feet.
From the parking lot, we could see smoke rising from buildings in downtown Santa Cruz. In the car, my friend turned on the radio, and we learned that the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge had collapsed.
That same feeling of grief returned—but this time, I was inside it. Not watching from afar but moving through its physical consequences. What followed—once phone lines slowly reopened and we were finally able to reach our families hours later—was another experience of collectiveness. People checked on one another. Strangers helped. People coupled spontaneously in the libary stacks. Time stretched, and priorities clarified. We were disoriented, but not alone.
Collective joy, by contrast, has not been as visceral an experience.
I watched the Miracle on Ice after the fact, already elevated to legend, its meaning explained through hindsight. But I vividly remember another moment of shared possibility: the night Barack Obama was elected. Whatever came after—and much did—it was a night of shared possibility. People gathered. Strangers hugged. Hope didn’t feel ironic or abstract; it felt communal. For a brief moment, the future felt imaginable together.
What strikes me now is how asymmetrical our shared experiences have become.
We are exceptionally good at collectively witnessing catastrophe. We are far less practiced at collectively holding joy—especially joy that is sincere, unguarded, and unaccompanied by cynicism or qualification. Even happiness now tends to arrive with disclaimers or distance. We react together constantly, but we don’t often feel together.
Which is why the communal response to Heated Rivalry feels so meaningful.
This isn’t about hockey. It’s about watching desire, love, and self-acceptance unfold without punishment, spectacle, or irony—and realizing how deeply we’ve missed that experience. What people are sharing isn’t just enthusiasm; it’s relief. There is generosity in the response, a kind of collective exhale. No one is required to harden themselves or perform distance. The joy is allowed to be real.
In a world saturated with shared doom, that kind of collective happiness feels quietly radical.
What Does This Have to Do with Work?
On some levels, nothing. And on others, everything.
Marketing communications doesn’t succeed because an organization adopts the newest AI tool, perfectly optimizes a funnel, or checks every KPI box. Those things matter—but they are not the source of resonance. Marketing communications succeeds by creating an emotional through-line between an organization and its audience: a signal that the organization understands its customer, respects their reality, and offers something that genuinely meets a need.
People respond to emotional coherence, not volume.
The same is true of leadership and work. Most of us need to work to live. But over time—through intention, discernment, and commitment—we can position ourselves to do work where our role is to champion products or services we actually believe in. Work that creates benefit beyond meeting shareholder expectations or satisfying Wall Street. Work that contributes, even quietly, to the greater good, community, and environment.
When people collectively respond to something like Heated Rivalry, they remind us—perhaps unintentionally—what resonance looks like. They are showing us what happens when emotional truth is treated with care, when human experience isn’t flattened or exploited, and when joy is allowed to circulate freely.
That lesson extends far beyond books or sports or singular historical moments. It applies to how organizations communicate, how leaders show up, and what kinds of work we decide are worthy of our energy and attention.
If the original Miracle on Ice was about improbable victory, then Miracle on Ice, 2.0 may be about something quieter but no less important: the rediscovery of shared joy in a world that has almost forgotten how to hold it—and the recognition that meaning, whether in culture or in work, still depends on sincerity.
The fact that we can still feel that—together—gives me hope.
Embrace joy wherever you find it, and share it whenever you can.
