Fear
Note - my goal this summer is to write more and post more frequently. All too often I allow perfect to be the enemy of good and get stalled part way into an idea. So…the ideas we’ll explore will be less developed and hopefully that’s OK. It might even be better, especially if we can get some dialogue going.
I’ve been binging the HBO series 100 Foot Wave. It follows Garrett McNamara and several other big wave surfers on their quest for the perfect wave. Trauma and fear are major characters in the show, and for good reason. At least one terrifying pounding and near drowning appear to be the price of admission to this elite cadre.
After a particularly rough experience at Nazare, one surfer confronts his fear of getting back into the ocean. Commenting on this struggle, McNamara says something interesting about fear - that fear is a focus on the past or the future, “two things that don’t exist.”
This is certainly not a new idea, but I’d never heard it expressed in quite this way. It’s a clever and sticky construction that helps motivate being present. I don’t surf but I do engage in activities that require absolute focus. All of us do, to a certain extent. At the very least, things we do regularly we can do better if we let go of the past and the future. We draw on the past to inform our actions and we of course consider the future when we do the thing. Otherwise, we might not do it. But whatever it is, it’ll likely go better and offer a richer experience if you can find a way to let the past and the future fade away.
Last week I skied one of my favorite lines - Eagle Chute - just north of Stuart Peak in the Rattlesnake Wilderness. The surface was awful - runnels, refrozen bed surface, with some sprinkles of blue ice. I was afraid to turn and afraid to fall. The past was relevant - I’d done this before. The future was salient because retreating wasn’t a great option and I was nervous about what the rest of the line would offer. But to proceed, I had to let go of all that in order to execute just a simple hop from one edge of my skis to the other. Then do it again, and again, and again…until it was over. A series of isolated moments, each requiring complete focus. That’s living…