Last night was a sad night in Boston. After marching 18-0 toward the finish line of the American Football season, The New England Patriots couldn’t pull off the ultimate win — The SuperBowl. The painful loss came at an even more painful pace as The Pats were outplayed by the New York Giants one excruciating minute at a time. It was cause for a heart attack somewhere, I’m sure.

But amongst the angst, I saw something great occur. I watched the game at Champions, a sports bar in the Back Bay section of Boston. I had gotten there at 2pm to secure a table for the big event 4+ hours later, and it turns out there were other Pats faithful there that early as well. From 2pm until the game winning touchdown by the Giants at 10pm, we bonded. We bonded over each 1st down achieved and each missed Brady pass. Collectively, we lived the Patriots elation and frustration, side by side, high fiving when we could, consoling each other when we had to. By the end of the night, my friends and I had bonded with June & Lorenzo, Steve, Mark, Chris and a storm of others whose names I never caught. We hugged at the end of the night. It’s amazing how sports can bond us to perfect strangers.

So how can we take this very Social Age bond and pay if forward? Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could find that same type of bond on a more regular basis? Imagine the things we could achieve and the kindnesses we could convey. Here in Boston, where the social isolation can be particularly bad (at least in Calfornia, people say “hi” on the street and are friendly in shops and stores), wouldn’t we all benefit from a bit of bonding with strangers? When we share our joys and hardships with others, the collective can do more, feel more, connect us more than anything. Imagine if we put as much collective bonding energy into helping the homeless as we did into cheering on the Pats. Ok, that crazy thought will never happen. But what about 1% of the collective bonding energy? Imagine how many homeless people we could help, or mouths we could feed, or schools we could refurbish if we could harness that energy. Imagine if you felt as connected doing a project for Habitat for Humanity as you did cheering on the Pats. Strange as it sounds, I would go to watch a Pats game every day if I could always feel that connected to the people around me. What would happen if volunteer opportunities made us feel the same? Everyone would want to volunteer more, help more, engage more. Perhaps our collective energy could really do some good. As always, I remain hopeful.

So what I’ve observed is that the power of many can be incredibly interesting and influential. Not that we could influence the outcome of the game with our yelling, praying and cheering, but with our devastation over our Patriots loss, perhaps we can take these new found bonds and do something extraordinary.