Who are you? Who am I? | Week 34

August | Travel and Experience | Week 34 | 8/27/2023
Experiencing life 

I have vivid memories as a child, getting battered by the waves at the beach, one after another as I attempted to body surf with my older brother and my Dad. In reality, they were catching the waves and I was surviving, but nothing was more exciting than being out there with the men, facing nature. I felt alive. That feeling was reliably present with any activity even slightly infused with adrenaline as I continued to grow up: rollercoasters, cars, snowboarding. And as I became an adult I found myself craving that feeling more and more. First it was hiking, like Angels Landing in Arizona, then it was skydiving on my 21st birthday and twice more after that, and it hasn't slowed down since. 14,000 foot mountains, 1000 cc motorcycles, black diamonds in the peak of winter, partying in LA; I have a craving for life, for experience, for the fruits of my labor. 

When I look back to the days of youth, I recall the fear of jumping off the high dive at our community pool, the inability to do back flips on the trampoline, and the trepidation to put my body in danger - a skatepark, tackle football, wrestling, a hard snowboarding run. I loved the thought but I was scared of the execution. Then I went through years of pain and suffering, knocking on death's doorstep multiple times, and I emerged with an energy for life that I wonder now how much is masochism and how much is openness to experience. For example, part of the reason I love a 14,000 foot hike is the accomplishment, part of it is the novelty and beauty of the environment, part of it is the thrill and adrenaline of the inherent danger, and part of it is the suffering and proximity to death that I feel when the oxygen is thin and I begin loosing vision. 

How much of my desire for life is driven by a fear of missing out on the breadth of experiences this life has to offer, how much is driven by a genuine elation as the experience itself, and how much is driven by the Stockholm Syndrome-like relationship I've built with fear and suffering? I would've said "it doesn't matter," up until I bought the motorcycle. Now it does matter, and it's something I am conscious of every time I go out for a ride. 

I learned recently about the meaning of the yin yang symbol, everyone knows it means balance, but that only scratches the surface. Why achieve balance? Not for some arbitrary it's-good-for-you rationale, but because that is where we find meaning. Too much chaos, too much unknown, too much fear and we are discouraged, anxious and unhappy. Too much order, too much of what we know, too little novelty and challenge, and we are disinterested, apathetic, and stagnant. It is when we are toeing the line between uncertainty and certainty, between knowledge and fear, between difficulty and capability that we are the most focused, the most in-tune with this life and therefore the happiest. But there's one further element in the yin yang symbol, the white dot in the black, and the black dot in the white. This symbolizes the inherent danger/chaos/fear inside the orderly/known and the inherent order/structure that we can grasp and create inside the chaos and unknown. It is in this pursuit, in this dance, that we find the most meaning in the experiences of our life. Pushing ourselves beyond our limit, accomplishing things, creating order out of chaos, all while remaining balanced, grounded and focused. This is the resolve I've developed and how I now have come to understand my desire for life and experience, particularly those which are nestled in fear, danger and challenge.