As you move from an external focus to an internal one,
Take a few deep breaths.
Fill your body with nourishing breath and as you exhale,
Let everything go.
Inhale,
Exhale.
Welcome.
And fair warning,
This one's a wee bit salty.
Recently,
I was hiking in Arizona.
I love hiking.
I hate heights,
Especially edges.
Most trails were just fine.
They had inclines and declines where the trails were wide and the slopes were gentle.
But the trails that headed to the highest peaks often grew narrow and the edges dropped off steeply,
Dizzyingly.
At one point,
Near the steepest part of a peak,
The person I was hiking with told me to look to the left so I could see the place where helicopters land to help people in distress,
People who had fallen and broken something,
People in serious cardiac arrest because the trail was such a steep grind.
In fact,
On a different day,
We'd been hiking around the backside of this very peak and we had seen someone on top waving a big white flag begging for rescue.
When I looked to my left to see the landing pad,
The world began to spin and it wouldn't stop.
I instantly turned toward the mountain and crouched down to the ground to study myself.
It took me a couple of minutes and lots of deep breathing before I could continue up the mountain because,
By God,
I was not going to quit.
I moved like a gorilla,
Staying low,
Eyes glued to the ground,
Although I did lift my eyes to behold the 70-year-old man in a speedo waving a huge American flag as he descended.
When I got to the top,
I sat as far away from the edge as I could and I kept my eyes locked on the rocks.
As I settled,
I finally found the courage to lift my eyes and what did I see?
A sheer rock face across from me and before my very eyes,
A young man scaled the side of that cliff face as easily as a salamander.
When he got to the top,
He started doing one-legged squats right at the edge of the cliff as everyone around me gasped.
That's when I noticed the man had only one arm.
Are you fucking kidding me?
I mumbled.
Here I could barely walk up the trail behind the rosy-cheeked Mennonite family because I was so scared and there this guy was,
Rock climbing a sheer cliff with one arm.
It was easy to beat myself up in that moment.
I should have been braver,
Stronger,
More daring,
Courageous,
But as we began our descent,
Three things occurred to me.
First,
Climbing to the peak of a mountain when you are afraid of heights is brave and courageous.
I left the safe lower trails.
I pushed myself because I don't want fear to win.
How often do we let fear win?
How often do we listen to its hissing voice rather than be smart and courageous and push ourselves and see what we are capable of?
That's the second thing I learned.
We are all capable of so many things.
What had that man been told he could and could not do because he had only one arm?
I was also in awe of my little Chiweenie,
Alfred,
Who while he wasn't on that trail because dogs weren't allowed,
He climbed every other trail like a badass and nearly every single person who passed us by commented on it.
He was out there,
All seven pounds of him,
In a big and challenging world and he was crushing it.
But that's the third and maybe most important thing.
We do not have to be good at everything.
We can be afraid.
We can say no.
We don't have to climb mountains or sing karaoke or do yoga if we don't want to.
Let me repeat,
We do not have to be good at everything.
We don't have to be brave all the time.
So can we all please just cut ourselves some slack?
Can we honor our edges,
Those times and places when we come up against our fears,
Our histories?
Can we do what we need to to feel safe?
Can we celebrate when we do choose to push ourselves and try something uncomfortable?
Can we magnify our good and our grit,
The ways we do put ourselves out there in places that are hard so we can see what might happen?
More than that,
Can we lift up others who are doing the impossible work of facing their demons?
Can we be safe and supportive presences that are there to cheer everyone on?
Because my God,
Being alive is hard and amazing.
So whatever you do or do not do,
May you find all kinds of things that feed your soul and help you live.
