Switching seasons

The colors around us change.

So do we. The process of becoming who we are is filled with challenge, so is our daily life.

"We come into this world hardwired for struggle" Brene Brown, Sociological reseacher.

Yet somehow we become the people that we once looked up to. We are Engineers, Writers, Teachers, Nurses, Doctors, Coaches, and helpful strangers.

It isn't what we thought. Sometimes it drives us crazy. Being an adult seemed so much simpler when we weren't one, and of course all we will ever be doing is becoming an adult. Who ever really makes it to the destination? Now that we are in pursuit, the destination doesn't seem to be much closer now than it was a few years ago, unless of course you look at our resumes.

Somehow we keep looking forward, our eyes always on the next task. Take a moment...

Today is a day to think of how you have changed, just as the world is around us. We have come far, and maybe it is hard for us to notice but look back far enough and your world will turn on it's head. Remember when you couldn't cook for yourself? Remember when you thought eight dollars an hour was great? Remember when you couldn't fix a flat or keep track of your wallet much less an entire life(but I still can't find my cell phone)? Be impressed with yourself, you should be.

I have a ten year reunion coming up and it reminds me how much we have changed. I sit around a table and all of my friends are married (I am not really surprised I am not), we all have somewhat serious sounding jobs, and everyone is more at peace with themselves and the struggle of life than they ever have been.

We have changed for the better. And we have changed together.

I work at Sugar Bowl Academy

I am on team Kokatat

Three words

Simplicity at it's finest:

 The words humbly are chalked into a beam across the training center on Donner Summit at Sugar Bowl Academy. Each day new slogans are marked on a board, but this one stays. It is the most challenging. It applies to everything, to every moment. We need these three words. We cannot let them slip away. But they do, the simpler something is the more ease we have in misinterpreting it, or passing it off as meaningless. But on this day it has meaning.

It means push on.

It means gather yourself and think only of the next movement, the next physical challenge. Forget class, forget the meeting at 3:15 when you will dearly want to go home, forget your endless search for connections, for love, forget trying to understand the meaning of sport, of courage, of heart and truth and pain and suffering. Let it go. You are in this moment and it is suffering. Endurable, progressive, willed even. And come back tomorrow. Don't think about that yet though, there is much to come before that.

These figures. These inert objects of sizable mass, of painful momentum sit idly. They are chipped by the change and evolution of the human body, of the scars of growth. They know of the path to health, the path to confidence and success, but they do just as a good oracle does: They allow you to find it yourself. They are boring. They push nothing upon you, they allow you to find it yourself. Only few will know their majesty, their prestige. That is okay. The fierce, the ones searching, the ones digging deep will find them, will appreciate them. Those who do will find communion in a moment, those who do will be here now.

- a thank you to Candice and Douglas Brooks for allowing me to come in and work out with the kids and them.