The Power of Normalcy

Ever since the original Overwatch was released I’ve been playing regularly with more or less the same group of people. There’s 15-20 people that play regularly, which means pretty much every evening at the same time I can find a group to play with.

Over the course of the years, it feels like we’ve all fallen out of love with the game, but we all keep playing because we get to play with each other. That’s the real reason we keep playing. In a lot of ways, it’s our virtual bar, a place for us to meet up, chat about the day, and rather than drink beer, shoot the shit while we shoot the other team.

Over the years we’ve been there for each other in celebration and tragedy. When I had certain events happen in my life when things become overwhelming, I had random DoorDash meals showing up at my house, and care packages sent to my kids.

Last night one of our members told us that one of their parents passed away a few weeks ago. They had been joining games regularly since then and explained that for them, what they needed was the normalcy that our gaming sessions provided in order to escape the grief and chaos that the event caused.

Hanging out and playing with us was what they looked forward to all day, and they didn’t want to change the dynamic, or have us ask how they were doing. They just wanted something to be the same in their life. Our voices, the normalcy of the same complaints about the game, our lame in-jokes, just us being us, pretending that nothing was wrong, because we didn’t know anything was wrong. That’s what they needed, and what we were providing without knowing it.

I had something similar happen in 2010. I was part of a group that regularly got together to play EASHL in NHL 09 and 10. Unlike my current group, we didn’t know much about each other, not everyone knew each other’s actual names for instance. But there was still the same regularity. Show up at 9:00, because by 9:05 all the 6 slots would be filled, and play together for several hours each night.

One night I showed up to find everyone talking about one of the other members. I was racing in to make sure I got one of the slots, and didn’t notice I had a message waiting for me on my Xbox 360. I had thought that they hadn’t been around for a few weeks, and opened the message to find a heartfelt message of thanks from the mother of the person I had been playing with.

I can’t imagine how long it took her to write out the entire message on the Xbox 360’s on screen keyboard, but she explained that for the past few months we had been playing with her son from his hospital bed where he had been battling leukemia, and that he had lost his battle.

None of us never knew. He never told any of us.

We were the only ones in his life not asking how he was feeling, or wanting to talk about his struggles. Because we didn’t know about them. To us, he was just another voice on the other end of the headset, and someone who could abuse the heck out of a team with an AI goaltender.

We treated him just like everyone else, and that’s what he needed.

Sometimes when you’re struggling you need someone to know so they can help. Sometimes you need people not to know, so they can keep doing exactly what they have been doing and unknowingly provide the normalcy you need.

I’m just grateful I’ve been able to offer both types of support.

-af

Home

Gemlog

Atom feed