Eating Elephants

What is it that brings you to life? Is there a certain activity unto which you draw energy upon? Or maybe it’s a certain person or even a group of people who light a flame into your spirit. I don’t just mean these as tools to excite you, I mean how do they move you? Do they broaden your scope of insightful thought, allowing you to perceive an idea that otherwise may have been fleeting? Do they make you ask the deeper questions into your life as to what is the greater purpose of this all? Do they make you smile, make you laugh, make you weep, make you reel and have to take a seat? I find it important for myself personally to push outside of the social norms and to go against the grain in order to awaken my soul. 

I’ve always had a keen desire to push the boundaries of what we label as everyday ordinary life, allowing me the gift to feel a little more. While I’ll never attempt to become the next Evel Knievel, I’ll never shy away from a moment of pure sketchiness with later reflection leading me to think, “that was probably a bad idea..” I love those moments! There are so many memories that I can recall from my past and think to myself, “how did I survive that?” 

As I age and my bones become weary from all the soccer, CrossFit, parkour running, and extreme front yard workouts; I’m not quite able to perform some of the crazy stunts that I used to be able to. Most days it’s difficult for me to even crawl out of bed without the support of my arms pulling me up. I have not been kind to my knees to say the least. When I was younger I could find a rush in just about anything that exerted the physical limits of my body and I found solace in those moments. It was as if time stopped and stood still. The moment, the adrenaline rush, the sudden spike of my heart beat allowed my senses to focus on just one thing and everything else seemed to fade away. 

I’ve had to find other means to allow me to focus my mind, it’s obviously not feasible for me to go jumping on logs or front flipping over boulders any more. I’m not sure if it comes with age or with wisdom, or maybe they’re just two of the same and without one, the other is certainly not bound to come. Yet, I’ve been able to find a certain level of calmness from just walking in the woods. You know you’re getting old when you’d rather sit down at a bench and count how many interesting birds fly by than to sit inside and listen to the hum of all that consumes us in the worst of ways. 

My most recent blog before this I talked about finding a bridge to jump off and into water. Well I finally found one a few months ago and decided to make a day of it. It was an incredibly sketchy situation to get to the bridge because I had to park at a local family fitness, get out of my car and walk about a mile and a half just to get to the thing. The path that led to it was on a train track but it was fenced off for obvious reasons that idiots like me don’t go wandering down the railroad system, and to probably keep people from trying to train hop. From the moment I stepped out of my car, I was determined to make an adventure out of it. I walked about a quarter of a mile on a pretty busy street, stepping through some incredibly tall grass and down a few steep slopes before I could get underneath a bridge that led to the train tracks I needed to stumble upon. Just this alone could have been a rewarding adventure in its own right, for when I got under the bridge my eyes lit up with a sudden infusion of graffiti bombing all around me. I smiled and felt as though this was the exact amount of mischievous delinquency I needed to find myself in. 

After snapping a few photos of the brilliant artwork, I turned up the track and began making my way towards the bridge that would allow me a refreshing swim. As I was walking I couldn’t help but notice birds everywhere, allowing me for the first time to encounter a swift up close and personal. It felt like magic being surrounded by these beings that glide so elegantly across the wind. There was one bird in particular that began to catch my attention, a hawk that hovered above my every step for about 5 minutes. I’m not sure what kind of hawk it was but as I drew closer to a section of the track that was incredibly narrow, I couldn’t ignore this thing anymore. It was screeching at me, almost as if to alert me to some sort of danger that could be growing closer. It suddenly dawned on me that hawks are known for their eye sight allowing them to see off in the distance. I slowed down and began to look for a way off the track, perhaps this hawk was trying to warn me of a train that was approaching. Sure enough within seconds of that thought entering my mind, a train blew its horn and sounded the alarm that my new friend was alerting me to. 

So as a proper delinquent does, I found a safe spot that presented itself as car tracks off to the side, surrounded with plenty of tall grass and brush to conceal myself from the locomotive that grew closer. As I sat down in the thick of the weeds the train was getting closer and closer, finally coming up alongside where I was hiding. It slowed down a significant amount, particularly when it was right next to me and I couldn’t help but feel that rush that I’d always found from pushing the limits in my younger days. Surely they don’t see me right? I continued to hide and shift my positions through the weeds and eventually the train ended up taking off again. Phew! I was home clear with nothing but an open railroad track to lead me to that ever evasive bridge jump. 

As I got to the bridge, I have to admit the feeling of the moment felt so exhilarating that I damn near talked myself out of even jumping off in the first place. I mean come on! Finding the graffiti spot under the bridge, walking alongside the birds, feeling this sensation that I could understand what the hawk was trying to communicate to me, hiding from the train so they wouldn’t think I was trespassing in some heavily fenced in perimeters. That called for a seat on the ground and a good puff of my tobacco pipe in its own right. However, I came too far on this adventure to chicken out of a 4 foot drop into some very refreshing water. So I took my shirt off and tested the depth to see if I could indeed dive in. Perfect! It was so deep that to my surprise I couldn’t find the bottom. I mustered up the courage that I had left and did something that I rarely ever do, turned on my phone and opened up the video to try and capture the moment. “Boy wouldn’t it suck if I fucked up and hit my head and drowned, catching it all on camera? Nawwwww I got this shit!” Yah gotta make it fun when you’re flirting with disaster. In that moment, time stopped and the tunnel vision began to sway over my mind. In that moment I was free! In that moment I was clicking with the way the universe spins her threads. In that moment, nothing else mattered! In that moment, I was nourishing my soul, creating a beautiful memory that will live on forever inside my mind. 

I’m back coaching again with our local Community College Soccer team of Muskegon and I forgot just how draining it can be to navigate the emotions of 18-19 year old young men, let alone my own. I asked them the other day after our morning training, what is it that brings you to life? I also asked them what they were afraid of. Not easy questions to answer. In fact I told them I didn’t want them to answer me in that moment but to reflect on it, and see where the answers may lay as they progress through this life. The truth is, I navigate those very questions every day and something tells me there is no right or wrong answer.  We do what we can do each day that is given to us and try to make the most of it. Sometimes we fall incredibly short on a particular day. We lash out at people, get a high dosage of sleep deprivation, and want to burn the world to the ground in the most self destructive way. Sometimes we find ourselves in the right space at the right time leaving us with this feeling of immortality and infinite manifestation. Sometimes we’re afraid of everything and sometimes we don’t heed the call of fear enough. All we can do is continue to consciously move forward, nourishing our soul in the way that each of us finds best. 

So, what is it that brings you to life? What is it that NOURISHES YOUR SOUL?