As anyone who has ever read my blog knows, the reason that I start writing anything is to help myself through a struggle. I publish them in the hopes that it may help someone else. I’ve not written in a long time. The main reason being is that I’ve been lost for a while. So many different things have happened or not happened in the past few months that I’ve lost my sense of direction. This has helped me create many feelings that are uncomfortable to wear on a daily basis: uncertainty, confusion, timidity but more than anything fear. The odd thing about this mental situation is that I don’t have the same reaction to physically being lost. In fact, I believe that it is almost impossible for me to be lost in the physical world.
Last year on my annual Appalachian Trail hike, my brother and I got physically lost in the woods. We figured out where we took the wrong turn during this year’s hike. However at the time we were lost, we never got fearful or confused because being lost was nothing to fear. We simply had to get our bearings and hike that much harder in order to get back on the path. The lack of fear came from my belief. I believe that I can basically never be lost if I’m surrounded by a triangle of three things that I know. If I have that, I’ll eventually find my way. That belief made getting out of the woods nothing more than a matter of time and effort.
After considering my belief about the act of being physically lost, I’m finding that I’m less fearful of my present situation of being mentally lost. In the mental space, I create the terrain. Since it is all up to me, I can always choose to be surrounded by a triangle of three things that I know: my family, my friends and my perseverance. At no point can I be lost if I have encased myself in those three things. So now it is time to get back on the path or create a new one. Regardless of which I choose, fear is not going to be my compass. I’m excited by the prospects of where I can go. Just because I don’t know the path, does not mean that I need to fear the path. Hiking harder or possibly farther does not scare me but the thought of being immobilized does. One foot in front of the other may not be the sexiest concept ever invented but it will get me going.
When I was a kid, I was very explicit about the fact that I did not like pie. It’s really a shame too because from what I understand, my mother makes great apple and pumpkin pies. Regardless of how much I was missing out, I held firm to my identity as a non-pie eater. Then once at my grandmother’s house, she was getting ready to order a pizza pie and needed to know who wanted some. Despite my mother’s urging that I had eaten it before, I held fast to my pie-free stance. Once the pizzas arrived, my younger self realized the error of his ways. There were exceptions to my pie-free world that I needed to recognize and accept. This was not the absolute commandment that I originally thought that it was.
In 1998, Mark McGwire hit more home-runs than any other player in MLB history. I vividly remember watching the games to see if he would break Hank Aaron’s record and I’m not even a baseball fan. At the time, I remember becoming personally moved by the chase for the home-run record. It changed the way that I thought about several things in my life and it had nothing to do with home-runs but rather strikeouts. McGwire lead the league in home-runs that year but he was also near the top of the leader board for strikeouts. He struck out 2.2 times more than he hit home-runs. In theory, the strikeouts are failure but in reality they are three more pieces of data.
In 2002 my girlfriend (now wife) and I went to a Fleetwood Mac concert. We had a difficult time getting to the concert because she had a broken foot and was using crutches. The general admission parking was at least a half mile walk to the entrance, so I ended up carrying her on my back for much of the distance. As the diligent boyfriend, I wasn’t going to complain. However at the end of the show, she insisted that we try to get a ride back to the car from security. We were told to wait at the security station for the van to come pick us up. Alongside us was an irate woman and her boyfriend, that were also waiting to be picked up. Phrases like, “He can’t go out there!” and “This is ridiculous that we’re being treated this way!” were thrown about several times. It became evident to me that I was sitting next to Billy Corgan. Although the Smashing Pumpkins had broken up, I was still sitting next to a relatively important celebrity of the time. Despite my realization, I kept quiet until after we’d all been picked up by the van and he and his girlfriend had departed. At that point, I spilled the beans to everyone else in the van.
Huryk Unlimited 