To do more is to be alive…

I wonder why I want to do more and be more.  Why do I want so much more out of life than what I have.  I think in part, like Godin said, its what makes me feel alive.  http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2013/03/im-making-money-why-do-more.html.

I wrestle like hell like Jacob did with not letting go until I find the root of my design, my true hard wire.  What am I here for? Why am I here? You know the questions that make you get up in the morning, keep you driving throughout the day, and then wake you up only do it all over again.  I guess I “charge” it or press the edges to try and figure it out.  I want to feel alive.  I don’t want to lose in a world that is fervently pressing the edges of change and advancing the human soul to new peaks.  We live in a world marked by the fringe and I want to make sure that I am in the front of that fringe, or at least in pace with its current flux. I want to feel alive and I think the only way to do it is to fight forward and deny the innate latency that beckons us to fail.

Wrestling…

What do you hold to? What is your wrestling?  I don’t mean, “Should I choose vanilla or rasberry swirl?  Should I run 8 miles today or ride 50? Do I tell my boss I can’t stand him?  Should I surf my fish or my 9’0? ”  This question is bigger, more central to your humanity.  It’s ripe with meaning, purpose, and creativity.  It resonates deep and low like the gongs from the church bells in the ancient spires on European shores.  It’s aimed  toward your core, your center, your very design. Okay, that may sound heavy and filled with potential drama.  But I bet if you stepped back from your life, your day, your agenda, your busyness, your company, your family, your job, your frustrations, I bet you’d see something sitting in the shadows of all those distractions that was anchored to the center of your soul.  Even though you can’t quite make it out, it clunks heavy to the floor beneath your feet.  Its the “thing” in your head that won’t go away.  It can’t go away.  It shouldn’t go away.  It’s yours by design and divine purpose.  Some might see this wrestling as a distinct shape while some might see a blurry haze with faint markings or the beginning of a certain form.  And for others it’s a complete blur, almost a shadow within shadows.  Whatever it is or seemingly isn’t, it’s there waiting to be exposed, waiting to be found.  It’s that very thing that lingers in the backdrop of your mind or tugs on the tail of your spirit, or pounds on the wall of our chest, or sits on the porch of your thoughts; it even infiltrates your subconscious, your dreams.  Although some of us may see it clearer and others struggle to make out anything at all,  we all have a “wrestling.”  It doesn’t matter if you’re a poet, president, or a play a pipe organ, you have a wrestling because you are flesh and bones and you are spirit.  What is your “wrestling?”  What is it you try to decipher with your wit, your strength, and your very soul?

I remember when I wrestled on the junior varsity high school wrestling team.  I was a scrawny, sinewy kid that barely reached the 128lb weight class.  I was not the picture of strength and muscle.  I was more like a stringy piece of grass surrounded by a forest of tall pine trees.  None-the-less, I made the team and even beat off a few of the stronger kids in wrestle offs.  What I liked about wrestling was, although you were technically on a team, each match was about the individual against another individual, whether scrawny, stong or skinny.  It was you against the opponent. Almost every time, it was a fight for your life.  Unlike a true team sport, there was no one else in that match that you could lean on for support.  It was a solo act.  All the rest of the wrestlers were in their chairs supporting you, but they were there waiting their turn and for their match.  All the while, your match was just you and the opponent.  You either won on your own or lost on your own.  It was a battle, a sheer few minutes of total exertion and strain.  I know, you say how can a few minutes be sheer exhaustion?  How can a few minutes be utter strain and turmoil?  That’s what I used to think, until I took my first match.  I think it lasted like 1.5 minutes.  Afterwards, I thought my forearms were gonna explode and my heart might just burst from my chest.  Of course, as I continued on the team I improved my conditioning and strategy, but in many ways the utter strain never lessened.  I just got in better shape and could hold on longer and work it harder.  But my forearms still felt like they might explode and my heart pounded like a race horse.  What to this day still amazes me was the total and constant strain required for every second of every minute as you literally used each one of your muscles to what seemed its capacity.  This is wrestling.  You take everything that you have in heart, spirit, mind and body and struggle against your opponent until the end.  You use all of your wit and every single bit of your strength to muscle through to the end.  In some matches you might just hold a position for a long time trying not to get turned or rolled or pinned while sometimes you worked your opponent to try and flip  or pin him.  But to hold that spot, to wrestle that spot took all you had just to stay in that space or turmoil, that place of wrestling.  You didn’t even really move, but you were pouring your soul into that commitment, into that move, into that space.  You see in wrestling you never knew how the match was gonna play out, as in any sport I suppose.  You would go with your strategy, your favorite moves, but your opponent came with the same thing.  You only learned about it as you wrestled and the wrestling match was always evolving to a different place the deeper you got in the match.  The point is, you had to wrestle to figure it out. The shape of the match took form the harder you worked, the harder you wrestled your opponent.  You either countered his moves, initiated your own, or just tried to survive. Needless to say, it was a grueling few minutes that required every bit of your mental and physical stamina to get through and over.

The point is that the match never took shape until you started and the clarity that manifested only showed itself according to the intensity of your exertion.  Actually, it was truly clarified by how deep and hard you wanted to commit to the “wrestling.”  Many times as I tried to hold my space or attack my opponent, my body would be screaming to yield and let be what would be.  However, I had to take my mind at that point and press through the strain of pain and discomfort to press through the wrestling.  To yield is simple and it brings a clear result.  It ends the wrestling.  But to hold the course and continue the choice to manipulate the outcome and push to the center of your discipline took a choice of will and heart.

We have a choice concerning how we deal with whatever is your “wrestling.” You may see it and be motivated because you know what you think you are wrestling, or you may not see it’s shape at all therefore ease away from the strain and yield. And yet, whatever your place, whether you can see the form of your wrestling or whether you still cannot make it out, you must continue to find its shape or further define your wrestling.  To wrestle is yours by birthright.  It is yours to own, whether you think its there or not.  And sometimes, we simply let it go undisclosed, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there.  You can ignore it but it is in your very nature, your very “being” to chase it.  It’s what in part makes you human.

When you step back and see the shadow within the shadow or its relatively clearer shape, you must acknowledge the thing and press into it.  It is your design and it is your human and spiritual call to wrestle with your “wrestling” until the thing takes its emerging shape.

To Stay and Hold

Dropping in on a 10 foot face of a wave takes a little bit of “stay and hold.”  In other words, it takes a little soul and spirit and mind to hold the drop as you careen down this emerald wall of liquid.  From the cusp of the wave’s lip to the curling of its hollow pitch, there is a surge and rush that can, for a second, take your breath away.  That drop can be a moment of recklessness, a brief prelude to an escape.  If you don’t hit this one moment though, you’re done.  (At least until the next wave comes) That moment and your position is critical.   It dictates the feasibility of the transition from belly flat on your board to snapping up and jutting tall into its unfolding. It determines most of your ride.  Your position and angle is the set up for the art of the carving and the shredding of the wave much like a shaft of lightening is to roaring thunder.  Sure you can possibly self correct if you set up too squirrely, too far forward, or too much to one side, but its more likely the surf will be dolling out its relentless and unsolicited pounding.

I don’t mean to say that “stay and hold” is a moment that is necessarily scary or that its even filled with trepidation; its just that it takes a bit of your intrinsic “wit” to commit so you can hit the drop and set up for the line.  If you don’t, you can sit too far back and get thrown out, pull in too late and get racked by the wall, or  crawl to far up the face of the pitch and preen over its falls.  When the wave pitches up and begins to throw out, you have to be in the right spot ready to pop up and pull into the shack (barrel).  It’s the whole point of surfing.

It’s not actually that you have to be in or on a single spot to catch the wave.  There’s always a great spot or a better spot but never just one spot.  The wave is a moving phenomenon.  It’s actually a moving and changing sweet spot that you have to micromanage so you hit it center on for the ride you see in your mind.  As the wave moves so does the “place” of your positioning.  You have to be aware of this shift and undulation and move with it.  If you don’t constantly adjust, our natural static, lazy tendency where we tend to wait for things, will keep us just that – stayed and listless.  Some like to sit way outside in the line-up and hit the mound of the pitch as it builds and paddle into its form while others like to sit deep inside and hold the line for a hollow, hearty, screaming barrel.  Depends on your board and the shape of your soul.  You have to find it yourself.

To actually stay and hold though doesn’t just take fortitude, although there is that, especially on the giants, but it takes the ability and agility to stay and hold so that you can keep your vision of the line, of your ride. The speed of the set up, the rush of your positioning, or the surge of the inevitable can mentally throw you off, like a beautiful sunset as you veer dangerously off the road.  The whole point of the “stay and hold” is to keep the vision so we can indulge  in the surprise and creativity of the pitching emerald wall.  I don’t mean to sound all Braveheart here, but I live for that moment when I’m in the water.  The drop is usually pretty insane, a quick rush, but its the line that I love to ride, the line that I love to chase, the line I love to swing up and down on.  It’s there where I am free.  My point is that if I don’t have the wit to “stay and hold” and keep the vision, I can’t chase my emerging, evolving line.

The real key though to this whole thing is to let go and trust so that you can “stay and hold.”  That might actually sound easy and even out of context, but its actually the most difficult part of the session.  Surfing is spiritual as is our life.  We like control because we think we can manipulate the outcome if we hold real tight to things.  Actually, in surfing, as in life, that is exactly how you lose it. If you try to control the stance before all that’s about to happen, you miss the connection to the ride, you miss the natural pulsations and rhythm of the wave, you miss the point really.  The wave is all about taking this dance with the Unseen and loosely taking flight. It’s hard to find this place if your holding too tight.  And to find that place you have to loosen your grip and set back into the calm of the awkward Power, so that you can surf . Control really is only a masking of your fear. Its a feigned sense of taking charge of your destiny. To really indulge in the mystery of the ocean’s movement and the ascent into elevation, you need a whimsical, steady and fluid grip on the ensuing parade of movements – the position, the angle, the drop, the pop, the turn, and the line.  It all has to turn into one move.  And only when you learn to let go can you see the string of actions as one move that then lets you peer down the line and engage the journey.  When you get there (to the line), peel down the face of the wave, and bank that bottom turn, you begin to find snippets of the Truth emerging right before you.  That’s where you can find the Center if you learn to let go and trust in the vision of evolving line and its creative force.  It’s there where we are allowed to connect and be surprised by Creation and ultimately moved by the Maker.   The best part of surfing for me is this surprise because only here when I let go and stay and hold, can I hear the whispers of the untold secrets and stunning surprises.

It’s in the living…

She was almost 98 years old.  Amazing.  Wow! She lived nearly a full century, almost a 100 years.  I can’t even picture with my mind’s eye what that might look like.  Imagine what she’s seen from 1912 to 2010.  She’s been in the mix from the days of the horse and carriage to the era of Twitter.  She’s gone from typewriters and hand written notes to cloudless technology.  She’s seen the first automobile, the Great Depression, the Great Recession, the internet, the Cold War, 911, Obama, and FaceBook. She saw the birth of surfing and snowboarding and its subsequent explosion.  (I don’t think she really cared or knew, but the point is she saw it.)  She saw transformation of culture, baby boomers to gen x to gen y to whoever is it that’s next.  Pretty gnarly and deserving of some serious respect.  My grandma saw swarms of change and lived through massive upheavals and dynamic innovations in human mind and spirit.  She was married to the same man for over 60 years and stayed the course of her faith from start to end.  She was the matriarch of the family, the wall, the pillar, the mainstay.  The one who held the line at all costs for the whole crew.  Her faith and power to “stay” was inspiring and humbling in the same breath, while still she was battered with and encumbered by challenges and bad draws.  The end for her was rough.  Her life just slowly gave way, through pain, moans, lost memory, and ultimately a loss of reality.  And yet she never swerved or veered in task or faith.  I don’t quite understand her steady trot.  She had plenty of reason to change course and alter her destiny, but she chose to stay the drop and hold the line and create and carve her own wave.  She saw change of the global landscape and the swinging pendulum of humanity sway to and fro.  But she stayed.  She loved. She lived.

You know how ink is everywhere.  Tats I mean.  Tattoos. We all have one or several that represent things to us.  Sometimes the art of the symbol and the ink is clear in its depiction and representation while other tats are secret, personal, mysterious, and sometimes just freakin weird.  Anyway, the point is that ink usually represents us to some degree or another.  A piece or part of us that maybe we can’t say or show or tell, but its usually something significant.  I think there is a part of us in the ink that wants those who see our art, our expression to believe that we live a certain way, that we live for something off the cuff, off the grid; that we have a purpose outside ourselves.  That perhaps we live for something otherly, something different, something unusual, something our own.  Sure we all want to be distinguished from the crowd and march to our own ditty, but really, ultimately deep inside we all want and hope that somewhere in that ink it shows that we are different, set apart. That we are distinct from the usual. That we write our own story someway and somehow.

I realized that night though when I saw here in her casket.  (I was hoping I’d miss that part, the viewing.  It always freaks me out.) Anyway, I saw her there full of peace, calm, resolve, and an odd yet visible array of hope adorning her stay.  My grandma didn’t have any ink to set her apart.  She didn’t have that faint but discernible splash of color or last letter of a word or anything slipping out from her sleeve or collar to tell those of a clever quip or image that she had hidden ink.  She just lay there, still, lifeless, loving, gone.  But I saw something that put a rush in my spirit.  As her wrinkled, frail, boney, skinny, hardy hands were folded over each other, they were gingerly set to rest on her Bible.  Her Bible.  Her worn, used, tattered, frayed Bible.  The pages were torn at the edges and charred with use.  It was well traveled and explored. She lived in those pages. I think she lived there her whole life.  Its what gave her the ability to hold the line and stay the course.  My point is that the ink, our ink give us a sense of something other than ourselves, a sense of something.  We put it out there  because I think deep inside we want to represent something, we want to find something.  Sure to a lot of people its just art and expression, but for the most part its an angle.  It’s a somewhat secret piece of us we want to show but not always talk about.  But for my grandma it wasn’t ink that set her apart or ink that told the world how she lived or what she wanted to be about. For her it was much simpler.  It was in the living. She lived what she read in those pages of the book gingerly set to rest under her hands.  That Bible, that Book under her hands that she read over and over and over was her ink.  Her living told us quietly but steadily and faithfully that she lived for Something else.  Her life was her ink and she put it out there every day for her whole life for anybody that wanted to see.  At all cost, she stayed the course.  She held the line. For her, it’s in the living.  I love you grandma.

Waiting

I think it’s mostly the silence.  The silence that exists within the waiting.  The thoughts in my head that bounce around like echoes on static canyon walls.  The unknown that flirts with a stillness and tries to force me out into a strange, cold openness.   Like shadows at night that mix with random noises that then make you think its “this” or its “that.”   Some days more than others, it messes with my head and vexes my spirit.  It can both stir up what has become sedentary, or through sheer monotony of boredom, it can drive random wanderlust deeper into that empty space. It can bring random and positive things to surface, like the froth of a boil, or it can also deepen that place of listlessness. It can cause innovation or it can bring in that thick, dense harbor fog.

Of course there is that clever quip that says in part, in the waiting silence is deafening. I don’t know if it’s this silence confined within the period of “waiting” that is deafening, or conversely that it gives us the opportunity to tune a sharper ear and actually hear better.  There seems to be a purity in silence that forces something out.  I think the silence is burdened with potential – both good and bad. More and more I believe that it alters your perspective to a different perch in order to pull new sounds to the front with a crisp, distinct pitch so that we see things we usually ignore, learn virtues that tend to allude us, or become startled at the acute flitting of a hummingbird.  The waiting intentionally seems to slow us down and permits us, if we let it, to become introspective to the point of enlightenment.

For me, lately, the waiting, has produced 2 distinct places.  First, it raises my sensitivity to the other noises, ideas, places, beliefs that I never really heard before or better, the noises that I never tended to listen to because other things, seemingly more important to me, outweighed their significance.  They were too “small” so I made them unimportant.  Like a sparrow, I let it fly by without a thought.  We all tend to impose a hierarchy of the “noises” we listen to based on what we rank as important.  We pay attention to the things viewable through our respective perch. The second distinct place is very different than the first because it brings me to a spiraling staircase that spins downward and dark.  As much as the first place inspires, this place can adversely bring a spiritual demise.  It can bring despair.  If I am not careful, it puts me dangerously close to the edge of wandering without aim, nearly intoxicated and bewildered by inactivity.

The waiting becomes a vessel that forces us either out to examine new horizons or it pulls us beneath the layers of sludge where we can’t see. Sometimes these things that push and tug are within our selves while others are with out.  As we shelve whatever we were chasing because our hand is forced by this period of waiting and silence, we are apt to fall into the two categories: we become acutely more aware of unique and new distractions that can bring a state of perpetual, emergent innovation or we can meander without intent into a vast, dry wasteland to spin our souls into a dust bowl.

And yet, waiting unfortunately is a dynamic spiritual tool, aside from turmoil and pain, that brings a silence that forces us to listen, because when we run around in a flurry of busyness and agendas, we don’t have the wit or time to pick up on the subtleties. Perhaps the two were meant to go in tandem.  Waiting forces things out into the open for us to contemplate and weigh their significance while the silence allows us to listen and learn.  It has the power to unhinge our unnecessary preoccupations or it can drive the will and mind of a man into the abyss.

The longer I wait, the more I wrestle with silence, the more I can see and sometimes the better I can hear.  Notice, I didn’t say that I love it, or that the silence becomes easier, or that I get better at it, or that I am gingerly basking in the staleness that it sometimes brings. It however must become, not matter your bent on the subject, a disciplined habit of pursuing what is in the silence while it is there. There is a chasing, a disciplined pursuit of what is inside the forests of silence that every soul must seek.  In other words, the learning bit comes from direct and specific engagement with the silence that brings about a wrestling in our heart, souls, and minds.  It’s a discipline of learning when to listen, when to chase, and when to see what the silence will bring in the “waiting.”  Only in the silence and the stillness, where we can escape the charades of life, are we able to hear that “still small voice” that distinctly and specifically calls us out.

Doubts are Traitors

I read good ole Bill Shakespeare today and he said, “Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.”  It’s funny how as independent and creative individuals we might listen to 99 people say something uplifting or positive about us, or what we do, or what we did, or who we are, and we become puffed up or at least excited about who we are perceived to be.  And yet, one random person in the middle of all the compliments shouts out in a random crowd something slightly negative or worse even cruel about us and that becomes all we remember.  Thats all that sticks.  Its instant defeat for most of us.  It cancels everything else out.  It alienates the 99 positives into isolation and only retains the ugly.  We focus on that one voice that pierced our psyche, our spirit, our soul and the negative ranting instead of the 99 who lifted us up.  We wonder where we went wrong.  We beat our heads against this doubt, this “traitor” as though the culprit was someone outside our arena.  When in truth, we are the culprit.  We are the traitors.  We are our own antagonist.  Its daunting how easily we can be thrown off course by a breeze.   Why is it for example, that we can digest volumes of valuable information and comprehensive data and yet only retain only that one torn and tattered page?

Our human nature was designed to create and publish our great works as a testament to our Creator.  The purpose of our enormous potential is to bring glory to our Maker.  It honors our purpose and exhibits the greatness of the Potter.  Yet we ponder these hindrances to our creativity more often than we work the potential.  We “lose the good we oft might win” because we are afraid to put it out there for fear some wretch will shoot us down or say “that’s not so.”  We let the hand of defeat, or better the crippled, wrinkled, hunched over spirit of doubt plague our innovative and creative design to a point that we stall out.  We construct our own low level ceiling and then hit our own heads on it instead of living under the canopy of an open sky to walk tall.  We are our own traitors if we bend low to listen to the faint, menacing whispers of self-imposed or self-inflicted doubt instead of harnessing our unseen and yet to be realized spirit of innovation.