Best in Show

Every Thanksgiving morning, America agrees to do two things.

Eat too much food and watch terrible television.

First comes the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which I dutifully watched for years because that is what Americans do on Thanksgiving morning. And when I was a kid, I loved it.

But by the time I got zits, I became cynical.

Maybe it was the lip-syncing. Maybe it was the celebrities pretending to be thrilled to be standing on a moving platform shaped like a cranberry. Maybe it was the relentless merchandising. And don't even get me started on the dramatic unveiling of Santa Claus at the end, as if the entire morning hasn't already been one long commercial for Christmas.

Call me Scrooge.

But then I discovered what comes on afterward. The National Dog Show.

Now this is television.

By this point the turkey is in the oven, casseroles are being assembled, the house smells like Thanksgiving, and somewhere in the background very serious people are discussing whether a small furry animal has the proper hindquarters.

I love dogs, so I usually wander in and out while all this is happening. But eventually they narrow it down to the finalists for Best in Show, and I find myself sitting down.

Sporting Group.

Working Group.

Terrier Group. (God loves a terrier!)

Hound Group.

Toy Group.

Non-sporting Group.

Herding Group.

One magnificent specimen from each group walks into the ring.

And then – every year – something very strange happens to me.

I care.

I mean, I really care.

The judge walks slowly down the line. The tension builds. The handlers are trying not to look nervous. The dogs are standing there completely unaware that their entire species is apparently hanging in the balance.

And then the judge points.

Best in Show!

The crowd erupts. The handler drops to her knees and hugs the dog.

And I get choked up.

Every. Single. Time.

I am a grown man sitting on a couch on Thanksgiving morning getting misty-eyed because somebody's terrier just won a blue ribbon.

What is wrong with me?

Except this happens to me in other places too.

I remember watching Sally Field win an Academy Award and hearing her famously blurt out, “You like me! You really like me!” There was something so nakedly human about it. Here was this enormously accomplished actress standing in front of her peers, overwhelmed that all those years of work had somehow led to this moment.

And I remember seeing Stevie Ray Vaughan come onstage with Buddy Guy at Antone's in Austin. I had heard great guitarists before.

This was different.

Watching him play absolutely made me weep.

His hands seemed completely free. The guitar wasn't an instrument anymore. It was an extension of the man holding it. Whatever thousands upon thousands of hours had gone into becoming that good disappeared into the music.

He wasn't trying to demonstrate excellence. He was simply excellent.

And apparently I cry at that too.

For years I have wondered why. Why should somebody else's achievement move me emotionally?

I don't think it's really about winning. It's something closer to glory.

Not glory as celebrity or applause. Glory in the older sense of the word.

The beauty of something becoming fully what it was made to be.

And that's why the dog show gets me.

There is something almost comical about watching an absolutely magnificent dog being exactly what that dog was created to be.

A retriever retrieving. A pointer pointing. A terrier being the terrieriest terrier that has ever terriered.

And inside we say:

Look at that.

We experience the same thing in ordinary human beings.

A carpenter who can run his hand across a piece of wood and know exactly what it needs.

A teacher who walks into a classroom and suddenly twenty restless kids want to learn.

A nurse who somehow knows when medicine isn't what the frightened patient needs most.

A grandmother whose kitchen table has become a sanctuary for three generations.

A mechanic who hears an engine for five seconds and says, “I know what that is.”

A father who finally learns how to listen.

A seventy-year-old man who has spent a lifetime angry and somehow, slowly, becomes gentle.

None of them will win Best in Show.

Most won't receive an Academy Award.

Nobody will stand and applaud.

But there is glory there.

Because perhaps excellence isn't primarily about being better than somebody else.

Maybe it's about becoming more fully what we were made to be.

The Biblical story ends with something like that.

Not with God throwing creation away and starting over, but with God making all things new. Creation restored. Human beings healed. Everything finally becoming what God intended it to become.

Which makes me wonder if those slightly embarrassing little moments when beauty or excellence unexpectedly bring tears to our eyes aren't merely sentimentality.

Maybe we're homesick.

Maybe when we encounter something exceptionally beautiful, some ageless part of us recognizes the world we were made for.

This. This is how things are supposed to be.

The musician disappearing into the music.

The craftsman disappearing into the craft.

The teacher teaching.

The mother loving.

The old man becoming gentle.

And, apparently, the terrier trotting around a ring on Thanksgiving morning.

Perhaps that's why sometimes we cry because something is terribly wrong.

And sometimes we cry because, for one fleeting moment,

something is gloriously right.