I tivo professional bull riding. Why? I love the psychology! Not man versus nature, or man versus beast, but man versus himself. Any of the cowboys are capable of riding any bull on any given day, physically capable. The question is whether or not the man is psychologically able to stay on the bull – can he control his own fears and his own movements for eight seconds?
Eight seconds – it’s not a long time, but it can be an eternity for a person who is in the midst of directly confronting fear.
There is something in bull riding that reminds me of surfing and kayaking. They share a fundamental element: in each sport, a person puts himself or herself in the hands of a force that is more powerful. A person cannot out-muscle a bull. A person cannot out-muscle a river. A person cannot out-muscle the ocean. There is no chance. All of these are forces beyond our control. And so each of these sports, or arts, becomes a microcosm for life – we ride along in the grips of forces more powerful than ourselves; all that we can do is learn to control our own minds and bodies so that we move with the force rather than being crushed by it.
The other thing is the absolute presence in the moment. Riding a bull, running rapids, or riding a wave, one cannot be anywhere else, cannot think of anything else; one is fully present in the moment in a very zen-like way.
Friday, October 26, 2007
“The play’s the thing”
Play is the essence of life. By ‘play’ I mean a couple of different things simultaneously. First, I mean ‘play’ in the sense that moving pieces are put into play. Life itself is composed of an endless collection of moving pieces, each one constantly at play, in flux: the ebb and flow of the tide, pulled by the orbit of the moon around our endlessly spinning planet; the rock cycle, slowly eroding, sinking below the surface, melting, being pushed upward once more; the water cycle, evaporating from the sea, raining on the mountains and plains, gathering into streams, creeks, and rivers, eventually rejoining the sea; the various life cycles of birth, reproduction and death.
Everything is moving, always, even if imperceptibly. Life is a constant flow. Yet, I think that there is something in human beings that makes us yearn to make things stable, constant, un-moving. I think that this may be a misguided desire based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the world: from a short-sighted perspective, things look solid, even permanent, things like rocks, mountains, and cities. We like permanence because it gives us a feeling of security. But perhaps we could find a more true security in learning to become part of the endless flow of life.
This is all more abstract than I was hoping for, so I’ll change directions a bit, probably into more abstraction: we need play in our lives. And here by ‘play’ I mean tension. Life is composed of one force working against another in a push and pull dance. We are accustomed to fearing tension, in relationships, in our own lives. We tend to hold harmony as an ideal, not realizing that tension is often the means to harmony. Tension – the expression of different forces engaged in honest conflict with one another. The rock directs the course of the river for years; the river smoothes the surface of the rock, changes the shape of the rock, moves the rock. In human relationships, I express myself openly and honestly, you express yourself openly and honestly; the result is tension, a tension which in turn leads to a better understanding of one another. The value of play in relationships.
The same principle applies to the conflicts inherent in the individual, conflicts of beliefs, and conflicts of desires. We long for a unity of self, a oneness of purpose and being (I think that’s a large part of the appeal of Mel Gibson’s movies, like Mad Max, in which all of the protagonists' thoughts, feelings, and desires are channeled into one unified sense of purpose – revenge). Maybe we suppress parts of our selves, block out some ideas because they conflict with our image of a cohesive identity. But maybe what we need in order to find our true identities is to allow our conflicting beliefs and desires to play against one another in order to find either resolution or harmony. Play.
The second meaning that I had in mind when I first said ‘play’ is playing, as in play time, or ‘go play outside.’ It seems to me that our increasingly competitive culture is losing the value of play. And what are we without play? We are reduced to mere functionality, servitude, mechanism. Without play, we don’t have life. Without play, we don’t have creativity (or at best, we have an anemic, stifled, pragmatic version of creativity). Without play, we don’t have joy. What are we without joy?
Everything is moving, always, even if imperceptibly. Life is a constant flow. Yet, I think that there is something in human beings that makes us yearn to make things stable, constant, un-moving. I think that this may be a misguided desire based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the world: from a short-sighted perspective, things look solid, even permanent, things like rocks, mountains, and cities. We like permanence because it gives us a feeling of security. But perhaps we could find a more true security in learning to become part of the endless flow of life.
This is all more abstract than I was hoping for, so I’ll change directions a bit, probably into more abstraction: we need play in our lives. And here by ‘play’ I mean tension. Life is composed of one force working against another in a push and pull dance. We are accustomed to fearing tension, in relationships, in our own lives. We tend to hold harmony as an ideal, not realizing that tension is often the means to harmony. Tension – the expression of different forces engaged in honest conflict with one another. The rock directs the course of the river for years; the river smoothes the surface of the rock, changes the shape of the rock, moves the rock. In human relationships, I express myself openly and honestly, you express yourself openly and honestly; the result is tension, a tension which in turn leads to a better understanding of one another. The value of play in relationships.
The same principle applies to the conflicts inherent in the individual, conflicts of beliefs, and conflicts of desires. We long for a unity of self, a oneness of purpose and being (I think that’s a large part of the appeal of Mel Gibson’s movies, like Mad Max, in which all of the protagonists' thoughts, feelings, and desires are channeled into one unified sense of purpose – revenge). Maybe we suppress parts of our selves, block out some ideas because they conflict with our image of a cohesive identity. But maybe what we need in order to find our true identities is to allow our conflicting beliefs and desires to play against one another in order to find either resolution or harmony. Play.
The second meaning that I had in mind when I first said ‘play’ is playing, as in play time, or ‘go play outside.’ It seems to me that our increasingly competitive culture is losing the value of play. And what are we without play? We are reduced to mere functionality, servitude, mechanism. Without play, we don’t have life. Without play, we don’t have creativity (or at best, we have an anemic, stifled, pragmatic version of creativity). Without play, we don’t have joy. What are we without joy?
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Heroes and Men
The following is an excerpt from a story I'm writing:
Heroes and Men
One day, the two remaining couples were in the fields harvesting squash. The hot, back-straining work went easier with good conversation, so the friends talked. Not looking up from his picking, Gray asked, “So Joshua, who are your heroes?”
“My what?”
“Who are your heroes? Who do you look up to, who do you want to be like?”
“I don’t have any heroes, Gray.”
“What do you mean you don’t have any heroes?”
“In this day and age, how can you have any heroes?”
“Especially in this day and age, man! You’ve got to have heroes!”
“How can you think of anyone as a hero? I mean who do you look to? Athletes? I’m not ten years old anymore. Politicians? They’re all corrupt as shit. Religious leaders? I don’t trust any of the living ones, and the dead ones are all dead, ya know what I mean? So who does that leave? Maybe people in books, but they’re not real. You take fiction as the obvious starting point: the characters are made up people. They may be beautiful; they may be admirable, brave, strong, whatever, but they aren’t real. At best, they’re the human imagination creating images of all the things we wish we could be but are not. Maybe we can learn some things from them, but it would be pretending to call them heroes.
Even non-fiction is fiction. I mean, non-fiction may be based on reality or based on real people, but it’s not real. It’s edited. It’s designed to show certain things and hide others. Take Jesus for example. Who was he really? For a fleeting second, the image of Father Eli flashed through Joshua’s mind, but he continued: all we have to go on is what his friends wrote about him thirty years after his death. How much of his life was filtered, not even consciously but subconsciously by his disciples. You know how it is – our memories render events and people down to a few simple ideas or images. How badly did the disciples want someone to believe in? The Jewish people had been waiting for a messiah for six hundred years. Then Jesus came along. He was a good man, an honest man, and he spoke freely. He pulled his disciples out of meaningless, mundane lives and made them into heroes, like Robin Hood’s band of merry men. So, how badly did the disciples need Jesus to be a hero? Their very identities relied on Jesus’ deification.”
“Sounds like Jesus is your hero.”
“Are you listening to me at all? What I’m saying is that we manufacture heroes out of mere men because we need to believe in something bigger than ourselves. We need to believe that we can become something bigger than ourselves. But the truth is we can’t. Men and women are merely men and women. We’re all imperfect; we’re all corrupt in some ways. And so, to say that I have a hero is to make a hero out of someone who is no better and no worse than myself. I would rather just be myself and let everyone else be themselves, no judging, no pretending. If I have a hero, I stop being myself and I become instead a bad copy of my hero.”
“I don’t think so. I think that just the opposite is true: it’s our heroes that teach us how to become ourselves. The giants that walk among us show us what it really means to be a human being. People like Ghandi and Jesus and Buddha show us the potential that each of us has inside. Are they perfect? I don’t know, maybe. But I do know that they are more real than most people. They are more evolved, more enlightened, more fully developed, however you want to put it. They show us what we can become and how to get there.”
“So who are your heroes, Gray?”
“Gary Snyder, the Buddha.”
“Gary Snyder?”
“Yeah, Kerouac’s friend. He’s a poet and a Buddhist and an individualist. His poetry taught me about Buddhism and about the importance of living a simple life, living off of the land. You have to live with the land, in harmony with the land. You become a part of it, and it becomes a part of you. You don’t take more than you need, and the land doesn’t give you less than you need. It’s a matter of faith.”
“Alright, I can see how you can be inspired by people, and how you can learn from people, but I still think you’re ultimately barking up the wrong tree if you look for yourself in someone else’s branches. You know what I mean?”
Gray looked at the plant between his fingers: “you need a spiritual practice if you want to get anywhere.”
“Spirituality is what you experience at the core of your individual identity,” Joshua said; “my life is my spiritual practice. Everything that I do and see and touch is my spiritual practice. Pulling these weeds is a spiritual exercise. Kissing Shasta is a spiritual ecstacy. Making dinner and eating dinner, and doing the dishes afterwords, is a spiritual discipline. It’s all here,” he said pointing to his heart, “and here, and here,” pointing to his eyes and his fingers.
Gray nodded his approval. “Have you ever tried any Buddhist breathing techniques?”
“Nope. Why do you think I need that?”
“Because you think that you don’t need it.”
“I’d like to try,” Shasta cut in.
“What about you, girl? You got any heroes?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Joshua looked surprised, and he turned to her curiously.
“I guess I’m supposed to have some sort of intellectual answer. You’re all talking about religious heroes and book characters and writers, so you’ll probably be disappointed with my answer, but it’s true. My hero in Olivia Walton.”
“Who?”
“From the TV show The Waltons. She was the mom. I used to watch the re-runs when I was a kid and I was staying at my mom’s house. Mom would just leave me in my room with the TV while she and her friends smoked out, or when she would leave for a few hours to spange on the corner. I used to pretend that Olivia was my real mom because she was always so strong and loving. She was the real backbone of her family. She never asked for anything for herself. She just took care of John and all their kids. She never needed anything for herself; she just needed to love her family. When I was little, I always thought, ‘I want a mom like that,’ then when I got bigger, I started to think, ‘I want to be like that.’”
Gina smiled as she looked at Shasta and Joshua. “You two are perfect for eachother. You know, you both gave the same answer to Gray’s question.” . . .
Heroes and Men
One day, the two remaining couples were in the fields harvesting squash. The hot, back-straining work went easier with good conversation, so the friends talked. Not looking up from his picking, Gray asked, “So Joshua, who are your heroes?”
“My what?”
“Who are your heroes? Who do you look up to, who do you want to be like?”
“I don’t have any heroes, Gray.”
“What do you mean you don’t have any heroes?”
“In this day and age, how can you have any heroes?”
“Especially in this day and age, man! You’ve got to have heroes!”
“How can you think of anyone as a hero? I mean who do you look to? Athletes? I’m not ten years old anymore. Politicians? They’re all corrupt as shit. Religious leaders? I don’t trust any of the living ones, and the dead ones are all dead, ya know what I mean? So who does that leave? Maybe people in books, but they’re not real. You take fiction as the obvious starting point: the characters are made up people. They may be beautiful; they may be admirable, brave, strong, whatever, but they aren’t real. At best, they’re the human imagination creating images of all the things we wish we could be but are not. Maybe we can learn some things from them, but it would be pretending to call them heroes.
Even non-fiction is fiction. I mean, non-fiction may be based on reality or based on real people, but it’s not real. It’s edited. It’s designed to show certain things and hide others. Take Jesus for example. Who was he really? For a fleeting second, the image of Father Eli flashed through Joshua’s mind, but he continued: all we have to go on is what his friends wrote about him thirty years after his death. How much of his life was filtered, not even consciously but subconsciously by his disciples. You know how it is – our memories render events and people down to a few simple ideas or images. How badly did the disciples want someone to believe in? The Jewish people had been waiting for a messiah for six hundred years. Then Jesus came along. He was a good man, an honest man, and he spoke freely. He pulled his disciples out of meaningless, mundane lives and made them into heroes, like Robin Hood’s band of merry men. So, how badly did the disciples need Jesus to be a hero? Their very identities relied on Jesus’ deification.”
“Sounds like Jesus is your hero.”
“Are you listening to me at all? What I’m saying is that we manufacture heroes out of mere men because we need to believe in something bigger than ourselves. We need to believe that we can become something bigger than ourselves. But the truth is we can’t. Men and women are merely men and women. We’re all imperfect; we’re all corrupt in some ways. And so, to say that I have a hero is to make a hero out of someone who is no better and no worse than myself. I would rather just be myself and let everyone else be themselves, no judging, no pretending. If I have a hero, I stop being myself and I become instead a bad copy of my hero.”
“I don’t think so. I think that just the opposite is true: it’s our heroes that teach us how to become ourselves. The giants that walk among us show us what it really means to be a human being. People like Ghandi and Jesus and Buddha show us the potential that each of us has inside. Are they perfect? I don’t know, maybe. But I do know that they are more real than most people. They are more evolved, more enlightened, more fully developed, however you want to put it. They show us what we can become and how to get there.”
“So who are your heroes, Gray?”
“Gary Snyder, the Buddha.”
“Gary Snyder?”
“Yeah, Kerouac’s friend. He’s a poet and a Buddhist and an individualist. His poetry taught me about Buddhism and about the importance of living a simple life, living off of the land. You have to live with the land, in harmony with the land. You become a part of it, and it becomes a part of you. You don’t take more than you need, and the land doesn’t give you less than you need. It’s a matter of faith.”
“Alright, I can see how you can be inspired by people, and how you can learn from people, but I still think you’re ultimately barking up the wrong tree if you look for yourself in someone else’s branches. You know what I mean?”
Gray looked at the plant between his fingers: “you need a spiritual practice if you want to get anywhere.”
“Spirituality is what you experience at the core of your individual identity,” Joshua said; “my life is my spiritual practice. Everything that I do and see and touch is my spiritual practice. Pulling these weeds is a spiritual exercise. Kissing Shasta is a spiritual ecstacy. Making dinner and eating dinner, and doing the dishes afterwords, is a spiritual discipline. It’s all here,” he said pointing to his heart, “and here, and here,” pointing to his eyes and his fingers.
Gray nodded his approval. “Have you ever tried any Buddhist breathing techniques?”
“Nope. Why do you think I need that?”
“Because you think that you don’t need it.”
“I’d like to try,” Shasta cut in.
“What about you, girl? You got any heroes?”
“Yeah. I do.”
Joshua looked surprised, and he turned to her curiously.
“I guess I’m supposed to have some sort of intellectual answer. You’re all talking about religious heroes and book characters and writers, so you’ll probably be disappointed with my answer, but it’s true. My hero in Olivia Walton.”
“Who?”
“From the TV show The Waltons. She was the mom. I used to watch the re-runs when I was a kid and I was staying at my mom’s house. Mom would just leave me in my room with the TV while she and her friends smoked out, or when she would leave for a few hours to spange on the corner. I used to pretend that Olivia was my real mom because she was always so strong and loving. She was the real backbone of her family. She never asked for anything for herself. She just took care of John and all their kids. She never needed anything for herself; she just needed to love her family. When I was little, I always thought, ‘I want a mom like that,’ then when I got bigger, I started to think, ‘I want to be like that.’”
Gina smiled as she looked at Shasta and Joshua. “You two are perfect for eachother. You know, you both gave the same answer to Gray’s question.” . . .
Monday, October 8, 2007
mining for good: the act of adaptation
"The Buddha can be found in the machine too" -- my favorite line from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. The author is responding to the popular sentiment that whatever is spiritual in the world is only found in nature and that the creations of man crudely cover over and destroy all that is good and holy in this world. I found the statement above particularly appealing because it challenged the perspective that I had held for as long as I could remember.
When I was nine years old, my family moved from the woods of northern Minnesota to a bungalow in a Los Angeles suburb. I wasn't happy about the move. All I wanted was to go back home to the trees and the lake, and my grandparents and my cousins and aunts and uncles. But we didn't go back; I stayed in LA for the next ten years. The entire time, I pined for what I had lost, looking back, looking back. The pain of this memory was made more accute by vacations back to the place that I always considered home and my natural habitat. I never felt like I belonged to the city of angels in any way, nor that it belonged to me in any way. We remained strangers, and I must admit, I felt oppressed by this alien world.
Still, Los Angeles was not hell, and I looked, unconsciously, for the Buddha in the machine. What I found was surfing, the church, and some good friends. The surfing that is undeniably a part of Los Angeles became not only a refuge and a joy for me; it became a lifestyle, a force that would shape my identity for years to come. I was no longer an alien in a world of asphalt and smog, displaced from distant forest lands -- I was a surfer. The smell of surf wax and salt water and the posters that covered my walls soothed me more than I even realized at the time. In churches I found idealism that resonated with me; I found community; and I found people who were kind and gentle and genuinely trying to be good human beings. Finally, I had the great joy of close friendships all through those years -- I always had people close to me to sustain me and share life with me. I will always be greatful for that.
LA is not home for me, has never been home for me, never could be home for me, yet I found much there that was good. It is this goodness amidst that which I find undesirable that makes me want to explore the idea of adaptation. I vaguely recall reading somewhere a definition of intelligence that said that its mark is the ability to adapt to new situations. I like this. We adapt; we evolve; discomfort forces us to grow, not only by surviving hardship, but by discovering beauty in places that we never would have thought to look. In doing this, we find parts of ourselves that we would not have otherwise found. We have to dig for good sometimes, to mine it out of even harsh environments, because it is there.
Mining for good has not been an easy lesson for me. I have spent much of my life looking back over my shoulder to places and circumstances that I have liked better than whatever circumstances I may have found myself in at the time. One mistake I've made repeatedly is trying to force a new environment into the shape of another environment. I still wanted to be a surfer in Arkansas. The closest I got was skimboarding a flooded golf course. The tragedy is that in stubbornly clinging to the treasured pieces of past environments, I missed some of the beauty and opportunities of Arkansas. I remember now a friend inviting me to try whitewater kayaking with him. I wasn't interested -- it wasn't surfing. I regret that now.
Years later, when I moved to North Carolina, I took up whitewater kayaking, precisely because I can kayak here -- it's an inherent part of this geographical environment, whereas surfing is three hours away and terribly inconsistent. I love kayaking; it meets some sort of primal need that is close to my soul. Through kayaking, I connect with my new environment intimately. Kayaking also opens up much of the country to me: before, I never wanted to live anywhere where I couldn't surf; now, I could live anywhere where I could surf or kayak.
The examples of surfing and kayaking are subjective, very personal to me, but I believe that there is a more universal principle underlying all of this. Namely, there is joy and light and goodness in every environment. Sometimes it is all around us; other times it is difficult to find, but if we actively dig for good, I cannot help but believe that we will discover positive adaptation.
When I was nine years old, my family moved from the woods of northern Minnesota to a bungalow in a Los Angeles suburb. I wasn't happy about the move. All I wanted was to go back home to the trees and the lake, and my grandparents and my cousins and aunts and uncles. But we didn't go back; I stayed in LA for the next ten years. The entire time, I pined for what I had lost, looking back, looking back. The pain of this memory was made more accute by vacations back to the place that I always considered home and my natural habitat. I never felt like I belonged to the city of angels in any way, nor that it belonged to me in any way. We remained strangers, and I must admit, I felt oppressed by this alien world.
Still, Los Angeles was not hell, and I looked, unconsciously, for the Buddha in the machine. What I found was surfing, the church, and some good friends. The surfing that is undeniably a part of Los Angeles became not only a refuge and a joy for me; it became a lifestyle, a force that would shape my identity for years to come. I was no longer an alien in a world of asphalt and smog, displaced from distant forest lands -- I was a surfer. The smell of surf wax and salt water and the posters that covered my walls soothed me more than I even realized at the time. In churches I found idealism that resonated with me; I found community; and I found people who were kind and gentle and genuinely trying to be good human beings. Finally, I had the great joy of close friendships all through those years -- I always had people close to me to sustain me and share life with me. I will always be greatful for that.
LA is not home for me, has never been home for me, never could be home for me, yet I found much there that was good. It is this goodness amidst that which I find undesirable that makes me want to explore the idea of adaptation. I vaguely recall reading somewhere a definition of intelligence that said that its mark is the ability to adapt to new situations. I like this. We adapt; we evolve; discomfort forces us to grow, not only by surviving hardship, but by discovering beauty in places that we never would have thought to look. In doing this, we find parts of ourselves that we would not have otherwise found. We have to dig for good sometimes, to mine it out of even harsh environments, because it is there.
Mining for good has not been an easy lesson for me. I have spent much of my life looking back over my shoulder to places and circumstances that I have liked better than whatever circumstances I may have found myself in at the time. One mistake I've made repeatedly is trying to force a new environment into the shape of another environment. I still wanted to be a surfer in Arkansas. The closest I got was skimboarding a flooded golf course. The tragedy is that in stubbornly clinging to the treasured pieces of past environments, I missed some of the beauty and opportunities of Arkansas. I remember now a friend inviting me to try whitewater kayaking with him. I wasn't interested -- it wasn't surfing. I regret that now.
Years later, when I moved to North Carolina, I took up whitewater kayaking, precisely because I can kayak here -- it's an inherent part of this geographical environment, whereas surfing is three hours away and terribly inconsistent. I love kayaking; it meets some sort of primal need that is close to my soul. Through kayaking, I connect with my new environment intimately. Kayaking also opens up much of the country to me: before, I never wanted to live anywhere where I couldn't surf; now, I could live anywhere where I could surf or kayak.
The examples of surfing and kayaking are subjective, very personal to me, but I believe that there is a more universal principle underlying all of this. Namely, there is joy and light and goodness in every environment. Sometimes it is all around us; other times it is difficult to find, but if we actively dig for good, I cannot help but believe that we will discover positive adaptation.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Immediate Lessons from Nature
What is our relationship with the natural world today? I fear that many of us don't have much of a relationship to our natural environment anymore. Collectively, we seem to know so little about the geography, geology, topography, flora, fauna, and history of the places in which we live. Some of us let the natural world slip by largely un-noticed, a vague prettiness to be visited on occasion. Others have lost contact amidst the great business of daily existence. Many have never really had a chance to know the land because they have been raised in large, urban environments.
Please excuse the long preamble -- what I want to get to is this: what lessons has nature taught you? For me, the great presence of the natural world has always been water. Lakes, oceans, and rivers have been places that I have loved deeply. Lately, I think about water all the time. I think about whitewater. I live near the largest man-made whitewater course in the world (class II - IV rapids). The course is made of poured concrete and deliberately placed rocks and gates, yet the water that flows through the course is as alive and natural as water anywhere else, so I am learning from the water.
One of the great gifts that the water is giving me is the joy of failure: it is teaching me to embrace failure as more than an unfortunate necessity. The water has taught me that the most sure and direct way to find what I want is through failure. In concrete terms, when I paddle the course trying to avoid getting flipped, I am paddling in fear, hoping to avoid failure (and possible injury). When I do this, I progress very slowly, and ironically, the stiffness of fear makes me more vulnerable to getting flipped. Other days, I paddle with the intention of getting mauled by the waves -- on the best days, this is something devoid of fear; it is instead an opportunity for a kind of intimacy with the movement of the water. On those days when I embrace failure, I work through weaknesses and progress very quickly. By embracing failure, one side-steps fear.
Please excuse the long preamble -- what I want to get to is this: what lessons has nature taught you? For me, the great presence of the natural world has always been water. Lakes, oceans, and rivers have been places that I have loved deeply. Lately, I think about water all the time. I think about whitewater. I live near the largest man-made whitewater course in the world (class II - IV rapids). The course is made of poured concrete and deliberately placed rocks and gates, yet the water that flows through the course is as alive and natural as water anywhere else, so I am learning from the water.
One of the great gifts that the water is giving me is the joy of failure: it is teaching me to embrace failure as more than an unfortunate necessity. The water has taught me that the most sure and direct way to find what I want is through failure. In concrete terms, when I paddle the course trying to avoid getting flipped, I am paddling in fear, hoping to avoid failure (and possible injury). When I do this, I progress very slowly, and ironically, the stiffness of fear makes me more vulnerable to getting flipped. Other days, I paddle with the intention of getting mauled by the waves -- on the best days, this is something devoid of fear; it is instead an opportunity for a kind of intimacy with the movement of the water. On those days when I embrace failure, I work through weaknesses and progress very quickly. By embracing failure, one side-steps fear.
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