Remember the first time the oldest kid in the neighborhood got his driver's license, and not only that, you and a couple of buddies got to go for a ride?
Yesterday was something along that continuum for me. After being locked down in Chevy Suburbans nearly anchored to earth by their armor and self awareness, eighteen hours ago at dusk I had a much different ride: I was in a dark silver Mercedes rocketing through the desert, no radio chatter included.
I shared the back seat filled with Kurdish interpretors on their way home from their work day at the compound- the afternoon commuter trip. What a difference timing, situation, and coincidence makes. The driver, also a local interpretor, had the radio tuned to a station that suited the landscape perfectly, with songs they all knew and I never would. For awhile I would be a visitor in their world, almost unnoticed with a window seat. Perfect.
Miles and miles of sand, dotted with adobe huts, sheep, and occasionally a glimpse of a hearty individual who lives out here. There are two tiny villages between the compound and the city of Erbil. The dusty orange sunset fell behind one of these during this transit, and I saw clothes hanging to dry, and women with their ha jib headdresses tending to babies in backyards. The mud walls of their homes took on the color of the sky. The earth around them was almost indistinguishable from the structures. Only the undulating ribbon of pavement, this narrow highway, offered any real definition of contrast and border. This desert is a study in subtlety.
Meanwhile, the car was taking the unmarked road under its wheels as if it were the Autobahn, and in terms of indeterminate speed, perhaps there is this commonality. However, in regards to safety conditions, there are no similarities to be found. Unlike the Suburbans, though, the Mercedes was doing this gracefully. The driver has driven this route hundreds of times, but for me, it was my first time free of the Suburban, a tank on wheels. I had both good adrenaline and fear adrenaline, which is to say I was alive.
I owe this opportunity for the self viability check to none other than the Chain of Custody protocol for liters and liters of urine drug screening tests. The samples, which I had spent all day collecting, had to be passed off by me. And they had to be passed off in a specific window of time, and that window was closing, because they actually had to go all the way to the US during the night. It's a complicated effort to just catch a ride to the city. As I noted in a previous post, you can't just call Discount Taxi. There was security involved, and in fact security was involved in this carpool, it was just very different. I can't tell you in this post how different it was, or how it was exactly employed. But I can tell you that Mercedes was just the right car for the viability check. And wow, what a sunset. Both were just too short.
While it's good to know what you like (chocolate, sunsets, walks on the beach), it's typically easy enough to determine these things. What takes more effort is figuring out your thresholds for difficult, demanding, or downright frightening things. Or one thing that's all of these. Have you ever finished a 5K and thought "geez, I coulda jogged faster than that?"
Would you go faster the next time, or be safe and train at the same pace?
So how do you know your limits? Or learn your limits? Few do. We can be pretty certain we're nowhere near exceeding them. We have room to be more fatigued, more confused, more frightened - and still be ok. Arguably, the baseline of comfort for most of us with the leisure to read and write blogs is at least cozy.
The 5K was just an example, but physical limits is just one type of challenge. It feels good in the short run to play it safe, but after awhile it has no real appeal of its own, just familiarity. Familiarity isn't really appealling, it's just inoffensive. But on the other hand, if you challenge yourself to lose touch with your cozy baseline and try something new or difficult for yourself, something that challenges you, then it's like building a base for yourself to stand on. The next thing does gets easier to try.
It doesn't matter if this thing you choose to do seems easy for someone else - it's your challenge. Only yours.
Do something better, something bolder, something harder than before.
This is about you finding yourself alive. And maybe less familiar to yourself.
Happy 2012.
pb
Yesterday was something along that continuum for me. After being locked down in Chevy Suburbans nearly anchored to earth by their armor and self awareness, eighteen hours ago at dusk I had a much different ride: I was in a dark silver Mercedes rocketing through the desert, no radio chatter included.
I shared the back seat filled with Kurdish interpretors on their way home from their work day at the compound- the afternoon commuter trip. What a difference timing, situation, and coincidence makes. The driver, also a local interpretor, had the radio tuned to a station that suited the landscape perfectly, with songs they all knew and I never would. For awhile I would be a visitor in their world, almost unnoticed with a window seat. Perfect.
Miles and miles of sand, dotted with adobe huts, sheep, and occasionally a glimpse of a hearty individual who lives out here. There are two tiny villages between the compound and the city of Erbil. The dusty orange sunset fell behind one of these during this transit, and I saw clothes hanging to dry, and women with their ha jib headdresses tending to babies in backyards. The mud walls of their homes took on the color of the sky. The earth around them was almost indistinguishable from the structures. Only the undulating ribbon of pavement, this narrow highway, offered any real definition of contrast and border. This desert is a study in subtlety.
Meanwhile, the car was taking the unmarked road under its wheels as if it were the Autobahn, and in terms of indeterminate speed, perhaps there is this commonality. However, in regards to safety conditions, there are no similarities to be found. Unlike the Suburbans, though, the Mercedes was doing this gracefully. The driver has driven this route hundreds of times, but for me, it was my first time free of the Suburban, a tank on wheels. I had both good adrenaline and fear adrenaline, which is to say I was alive.
I owe this opportunity for the self viability check to none other than the Chain of Custody protocol for liters and liters of urine drug screening tests. The samples, which I had spent all day collecting, had to be passed off by me. And they had to be passed off in a specific window of time, and that window was closing, because they actually had to go all the way to the US during the night. It's a complicated effort to just catch a ride to the city. As I noted in a previous post, you can't just call Discount Taxi. There was security involved, and in fact security was involved in this carpool, it was just very different. I can't tell you in this post how different it was, or how it was exactly employed. But I can tell you that Mercedes was just the right car for the viability check. And wow, what a sunset. Both were just too short.
While it's good to know what you like (chocolate, sunsets, walks on the beach), it's typically easy enough to determine these things. What takes more effort is figuring out your thresholds for difficult, demanding, or downright frightening things. Or one thing that's all of these. Have you ever finished a 5K and thought "geez, I coulda jogged faster than that?"
Would you go faster the next time, or be safe and train at the same pace?
So how do you know your limits? Or learn your limits? Few do. We can be pretty certain we're nowhere near exceeding them. We have room to be more fatigued, more confused, more frightened - and still be ok. Arguably, the baseline of comfort for most of us with the leisure to read and write blogs is at least cozy.
The 5K was just an example, but physical limits is just one type of challenge. It feels good in the short run to play it safe, but after awhile it has no real appeal of its own, just familiarity. Familiarity isn't really appealling, it's just inoffensive. But on the other hand, if you challenge yourself to lose touch with your cozy baseline and try something new or difficult for yourself, something that challenges you, then it's like building a base for yourself to stand on. The next thing does gets easier to try.
It doesn't matter if this thing you choose to do seems easy for someone else - it's your challenge. Only yours.
Do something better, something bolder, something harder than before.
This is about you finding yourself alive. And maybe less familiar to yourself.
Happy 2012.
pb
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