Category Archives: Personal Growth

Landing on My Feet

Posted by dkrashb on

We have returned to the hang gliding hills.  The instructor, Dan, tells me to run like I’m on Baywatch.  I try to channel David Hasselhoff as I take my next run down the hill, although I’m certain Dan had someone blonde and female in mind.

The rest of the morning, my flights seem to get better and better.  Dan asks me if I want to start trying to land on my feet.  I have seen many people land on their feet.  They swoop in low and then allow the nose to reach trim, move their hands up on the bars, and then push up, tipping the nose back so that the glider is like a super-hero cape behind them.  Then, they lower gently to the earth and land on their feet, just like any modern-day super hero should.

My first attempt, I get close, but when I try to flare, my arms go out fully extended and the glider is just barely tipped back.  I get enough lift to almost put my feet down, but then I crash to the ground with a thud.

I go through several more attempts, making mistakes each time.  My closest attempt culminates with me falling flat on my face.  I didn’t think it was possible to actually hit your face on the ground while strapped into a hang glider, but I manage it.  Pat pulls up on the Kubota and says, “Are you OK?  You landed flat on your face!”  I assure him I am aware I landed on my face.

After a final roll-in landing, I decide it’s time to call it quits for the day if I want to make sure I can get up tomorrow.

As I change into my dry clothes, I count the bruises.  I have a scraped ankle, bruises on both knees and both hips.  My shoulders are bruised, my arm is bruised, and my wrists and forearms ache.  For a moment I wonder why I continue beating myself up.  I smile to myself as I remember the feeling of having a really good flight.  The feeling of being lifted up into the air and then riding the ground effect for that brief moment before the wheels touch down.

I look at my bruises a second time and smile knowing I earned them because I took a major step forward today.  I think, “This is fun.  I’ll stop when it’s not fun anymore.”

I’ve always believed the saying, “it’s about the journey, not the destination,” but I’ve never really done anything that way.  Learning to hang glide is the first time I’ve taken on learning something with no goal in mind. I don’t know if I will ever do a mountain launch.  All I know is I really like the way it feels to glide off the training hill.  I’m having a ball right where I am and I’m having a ball learning one small skill at a time.  Why would I give that up?

Christmas Aftermath and Unabashed Silliness

Posted by dkrashb on

I repeat the start of yesterday, rising before the sun and sitting alone in the living room watching the lights on the tree.  But this morning, I reflect on Christmas yesterday.  The remnants of wrapping paper remain on the floor.  I have yet to turn on the news to see if world peace was achieved.

Instead, I think about the crazy toys we picked out for my nephews, 18 and 19 years old.  We got funny whistles that play when they are turned over and the whistle slides through a tube.  I laugh as I recall my nephews trying to synchronize their whistles to play a chord.

We also got them a Pokey and a Gumby–I was pleased when each took a few moments to contort them into ridiculous poses.  But my favorite was when they opened the cheap mustache kits and each adhered a fake mustache to their faces.  The oldest resembled Charlie Chaplin with the thick, squarish mustache he picked out and the youngest looked like a silent movie villain with the skinny mustache he tried on.

While we did get them each a gift they wanted in addition to these silly finds, I suspect it will be these toys they remember with a smile when they tell their kids about the Christmases they had.

I grow serious for a moment and do a mental check on how I did with judging.  I am pleased that I noticed every time I was judgmental.  I think about what triggered a judgmental response and recognize that I am guilty of the things I judge the most harshly.  I am reminded of a friend of mine who told me he was a horrible gay basher until he came out of the closet.  As if we somehow distance ourselves from our own guilt by harshly condemning others for what we want most to hide about ourselves.  Hypocrisy is not my friend.

I wonder for a moment if “coming out of the closet” about my own secrets would somehow free me from this tendency to judge.  But I recall that my friend did not leave his judgments behind by revealing his sexual orientation; rather he changed sides on who he thought was right and wrong.  Perhaps he was ashamed of having been cruel.

Rather than follow in my friend’s footsteps, then, I decide I will simply stay with noticing when I am judging and letting it go.  This was quite effective yesterday.  Instead of getting worked up and angry, I simply noticed I was judging and moved on.  It may have been my most peaceful (and silly) Christmas yet.

I’m happy with my progress even if it wasn’t perfect.  I was freed to focus on creating silliness in the here and now instead of talking about (and getting upset about) things in the past or things imagined.

I decide I need to amend my wish for this holiday season:  peace, love, joy, and unabashed silliness.

All I Want for Christmas is World Peace

Posted by dkrashb on

I would very much like to think of myself as a non-judgmental person.  But then I catch myself saying something like, “that crazy person is so judgmental–s/he thinks s/he is better than everyone else” and realize this is a lesson I’ve yet to master.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.  Mother Theresa

Judgment riles me up, makes me feel righteous, justified, and even vengeful.  It separates me into the “right” and leaves those I judge in the “wrong.”  Having cast judgment, there is no need to listen or consider; all that can follow are proclamations.

Why do I judge?  There are practical reasons to make judgments.  For example, I choose to spell “judgment” with the standard American spelling instead of “judgement,” the standard British spelling.  Which is preferable?

In my case, this simple choice hides a deeper judgment.  I spell it “judgment” because I was taught that Americans who spell it “judgement” are ignorant.  If someone were to comment that I misspelled “judgment,” I could point them to a dictionary and explain that this is the correct American spelling.  I would be left feeling redeemed and, if I am painfully honest, even superior.

What I would not feel is connected to my fellow human being, negotiating the world together in harmony.

Love is the absence of judgment.  The Dalai Lama

What would I lose in giving up my judgments?  Clearly, my judgments benefit me in some way or I wouldn’t make them.  Would I be less smart if I never judged someone else to be stupid?  Would I be less hard working if I never judged anyone else to be lazy?  Would I be less competent if I never judged someone else to be incompetent?  Or do I make these judgments out of fear that I am what I judge?  Is pointing at someone else and calling them names a way of separating myself from what I don’t want to be?

I would hate to be discounted because I made a mistake.  What I would like is to be accepted for a flawed human being with the best of intentions.  What I need is to be heard and understood without being called good or bad.

 The moment that judgment stops through acceptance of what it is, you are free of the mind.  You have made room for love, for joy, for peace.  Eckhart Tolle

And that, dear reader, is what I want for Christmas:  love, joy, and peace.  I arm myself with the awareness that I judge.  I prepare myself to notice when I am judging.  I know that with attention, I can create more space for love, joy, and peace.  And in this gift to myself, I hope I can contribute just a little to a gift to the world:

World peace must develop from inner peace.  Peace is not the absence of violence.  Peace is the manifestation of human compassion.  The Dalai Lama

Winter Solstice Anniversary

Posted by dkrashb on

Today is our wedding anniversary.  Of the 16 1/2 years we’ve been together, Pat and I have now been married for 5.  Yeah, I know, we were slow to decide to go mainstream.

We were married on the winter solstice in 2006.  I wish I had a great story to tell as to why we got married on the winter solstice, but, it was a complete accident.  It turned out to be a happy accident because had we gotten married on a day that didn’t have an event marked on most calendars, we would completely forget our anniversary.  Unfortunately, it took us a while to figure out the winter solstice doesn’t always fall on the 21st–there’s a good chance we celebrated our 1st anniversary on the wrong day.

Weathering the bad and the good together has been a remarkable experience.  When I think about the expectations I had in my twenties compared to the reality of a 16 1/2 year relationship, I sometimes laugh.  Our culture fills our heads with ridiculous expectations about head-over-heels romance–and simultaneously ignores how love shifts and grows, becoming more powerful over time.

Someone once pointed out to me that fairy tales–both traditional and the modern version (romantic movies)–end when the couple gets together.  All we are told is they “live happily ever after.”  I’m here to tell you that if “ever after” is supposed to mean they lived happily all of the time from that point forward, it ain’t happening.

People are not one dimensional.  We get cranky and scared and irritable and depressed and rude and angry in turn.  There’s no such thing as “a nice person” who isn’t also sometimes annoying, difficult, needy, bossy, or whatever.  And how we see the other person has as much to do with us as it does with them, which is also inconstant.

I often ask myself what makes a relationship work.  When I was young, I wanted fireworks and sweep-me-off-my-feet excitement.  Then I figured out fireworks fizzle and I prefer to walk, but a guy who will help with the laundry and cooking  makes every day better.

I can’t say I’ve really decided what makes a relationship work, but I’m honing in on it gradually.  Here’s my list so far:

1) Mutual respect and admiration.  It’s hard to put up with someone’s foibles if you don’t respect and admire them as they are.  The parts you respect and admire keep you sane when the parts you want to kill surface.  🙂

2) Laughter.  It’s OK if you don’t always get each other’s jokes, but you’ve got to get most of them.

3)  Adventure.  Life can get pretty darn repetitive.  Having some form of adventure together helps keep it interesting.

4) Patience.  Not the kind of patience you have to have for children, but patience with yourself, your life, your spouse.  The patience that allows you to wait and see when you start to get afraid or angry.  The patience that allows you to love each other for who you are in all of your dimensions.

Ask, Don’t Tell

Posted by dkrashb on

I am now participating in my Columbus book club virtually via FaceTime.  They have a lazy susan for their iPad so they can spin me to face whoever is talking; it works pretty well.  We’re working on improving our communication skills with the book Nonviolent Communication:  A Language of Life by Marshall Rosenberg.

I find the premise fascinating.  If we can learn to “use our words” (as my mother used to say) compassionately, we can hear each other and connect to one another in new ways.  I am struggling to apply these concepts in my real life.  For example, here is a typical situation:

Reading my email, I discover that someone has still not done something they were supposed to do months ago.  This is the 5th month of exchanging emails and having calls and still seeing no action.  I’m frustrated and stumped.  I immediately think, “What the hell is his problem?  Why is this so difficult?  Why can’t he just do what he’s supposed to do?”

I am judging my colleague as bad.  However, NVC suggests that instead of just reacting, my “words become conscious response based firmly on awareness of what we are perceiving, feeling, and wanting.  We are led to express ourselves with honesty and clarity, while simultaneously paying others a respectful and empathic attention.  In any exchange, we come to hear our own deeper needs and those of others.”

The first step is, according to Rosenberg, to observe behavior.  In this case, I observe that my colleague is not doing his job.  This sets off the NVC alarm–I’m judging what that person’s job is and whether or not he is doing it.  I try again:  I am receiving delayed and incomplete information that implies the customer has been left hanging.

The second step is how do I feel about it?  I’m frustrated, angry, irritated, and worried that the customer is dissatisfied.

Step 3:  what is my need?  This is a hard question.  Why do I feel responsible for how this customer is getting treated by the person who is actually responsible for the relationship?  I will get paid the same regardless, so it’s not money.  It’s unlikely to affect my career in any way.  I guess it’s a core value of mine.  But there is also the fact that I don’t want another fire drill if this drags on too long.

Step 4:  Request concrete actions.  I need to know what the customer’s state of mind is.    I’m just guessing at this point.  I also need to know exactly what this person believes has to happen to reach resolution.  I want him to tell me each step, when it’s going to happen, and what he needs from me so he can get it done.  Then, I want to know it’s done.

As I write this, I realize that I have been telling him what he needs to do.  Maybe I should ask him to tell me what he needs from me?

The Musings of a Passenger

Posted by dkrashb on

It’s our final day in the Smokies.  Checkout time is at 11:00AM and I have a massage scheduled at 11:00AM.  As it turns out, it’s the last day the lodge will be open for the season.  Having fed us all breakfast, packed us all one last lunch for the road, and checked us all out, they are closing down the lodge for the winter.  I feel a little bad about the timing of my massage, but since I didn’t pick the time, I decide not to worry about it.

Pat takes another walk out to sunrise point while I head off to the massage room with the massage therapist.  After he walks, he will sit in the lodge lobby, in front of the giant fire place, reading something from the large library accumulated there.

The massage is wonderful.  I feel like jelly afterwards, oozing back into my clothes, out into the cold, and into the car.  It’s a nice state to go for a ride in, actually.  I try to sit so I’m not hunching up my shoulders, maintaing the state of relaxation I’ve obtained.  I look out the windows and absorb the limited view with little going on in my head (for once) besides the occasional reminder to relax a muscle that’s tightened up again.  After several minutes, Pat asks me if I’m sleeping.  I laugh at this–like I must be asleep if I am this relaxed.

I rouse myself a little.  Enough to engage in conversation with Pat.  I try to keep part of my mind checking in to make sure I’m staying relaxed periodically.  This gets a little tricky as we wind our way along the Cherahola Skyway where a storm apparently went through last night.  Fallen trees and other debris surprise us around many curves.  Fortunately, any of the trees that were all the way across the road have been cut and hauled away by now.  I find myself wondering if Snowbird Mountain was not hit by the storm or if we just slept through it.

The thick fog makes the views limited today.  I’m grateful that we had a couple of days of great visibility to see the spectacular views.  While I’ve never been one to go for scenic drives unless it was on the way to somewhere else, on a clear day, this drive is one that would be well worth going out of the way for.  Even from the car, it makes you feel connected to the world around you in a spectacular way.

One of the things that has caught both Pat and me by surprise since moving to Chattanooga is how beautiful this part of the country really is.  Even though we have both been to this region many times earlier in our lives, we both sort of dismissed it.  Perhaps it’s like the way we tend to mind our manners less with people we know will continue to love us anyway–the Smokies were accessible.  You would think this would make them more desirable, but we both tended to prefer trips out West when we started planning vacations.  The Rockies and Sierra Nevadas seemed far more appealing than the Smokies.

Now, discovering another incredibly beautiful place nearly every time we turn a corner, I feel dismayed that we missed earlier opportunities to more fully explore this area of the country.  Like I’ve been a bad friend, taking the Smokies for granted, thinking they would be there waiting for me to find time for them.  As it turns out, they did.  But, to use a photography analogy, I previously saw “the Smokies” through a wide angle lens–a single scene to take in one shot.  I now see “the Smokies” through a macro lens–an infinite collection of possibilities, each with their own virtues.  I don’t have enough life left to see the things I now want to see just in this area.  Then again, I suppose even a full lifetime wouldn’t be enough time anyway.

This causes me to ponder the whole concept of being nomadic.  If the purpose is to see and experience new things, can’t that be achieved while standing in one place?  After all, when I get out my macro lens, I discover the closer I get to a subject, the more of its details that are revealed, the more magnificent my subject seems.  Each time I experience this, I am awed by the things I never noticed before.

Here is an example of a Katydid (I think), which I normally would just see as a large, green bug, but its beauty is revealed in its intricate details and varying colors when viewed up close:

I am reminded of an experience I had back in Columbus that I may have mentioned before.  I used to ride my bike to work regularly.  My favorite part of the ride was the short stretch along the Olentangy multi-use trail.  I would enter a section of the trail that was in thick woods.  Then, the woods fell away abruptly to an open field that had been turned into a prairie habitat, full of wild flowers.  I could hear the birds all around me and I felt certain there were birds all over the flowers in that field, but I could never see any.

Then, on a Sunday, I went roller blading on the same trail.  At that speed, I was able to see some song sparrows and goldfinches popping in and out among the flowers.  I was surprised I didn’t see more birds, though.

One day, on a weekend, I went for a walk and ended up strolling through the prairie.  I spotted motion and stopped and stood still to better see.  When I stopped moving, it was like a curtain lifted.  For the first time, I saw that the prairie was buzzing (literally) with life–bees, hummingbirds, several types of sparrows, chipmunks, mosquitos, so many forms of life moving all around me that I couldn’t begin to count them all.  But I had to stand still to notice they were there.

I suppose, as is true of virtually everything in life, it’s all about balance.  A balance between seeing the forest and seeing the trees means a balance between moving and standing still.  A balance between seeking and finding means a balance between dreaming and realizing.  I wonder how you know when you’ve found the balance point?

Ah Ha

Posted by dkrashb on

On Friday night, we have dinner with our hosts.  Our new tradition is to go to La Casita, a little Mexican joint on Bethel Rd that we all like.  Tonight, it’s hopping.  Gill, Pat, and I arrive first.  Gina will meet us there, coming directly from work.  It’s only 5:30PM when we arrive with the blue hair crowd. We have no trouble getting a table, but by the time Gina arrives, the restaurant is full.

We have our dinner and a round of margaritas.  Then, Gill and I, Gill having had no alcohol and me having consumed only 1/2 of my margarita in the past hour and a half, drive the two cars back while Gina and Pat order another round.  Gill drives the two of us back to the restaurant again and we return to our table to hang out until two friends Gina and I are meeting arrive.  We send Gill and Pat home when Vivienne and Andrea get there.  Gina and I are now free to indulge in margaritas knowing that Gill, who doesn’t drink, will safely get us home when we are ready.

Unfortunately, I have a hard time letting go of feeling like we’re inconveniencing others.  It’s Friday night and we have already occupied the table for 2 hours by the time our friends arrive.  I watch the crowd grow–standing at the door holding beepers–and try not to feel bad.  I am not sure if my conscientiousness when it comes to making people wait came from some childhood trauma or if it’s just normal politeness, but I seem to have honed in on “Thou Shalt Not Make Others Wait” in etiquette while I am simultaneously oblivious to many other basic rules of consideration.  So much so that things like sitting at a light for more than a split second after it turns green creates anxiety in me.

I had to learn early in my career not to be several minutes early to meetings because it not only wasted my time, but it made others think I didn’t have enough work to do.  Learning to be fashionably late to parties was another tough adjustment.  I’m still often the first to arrive.  This is a case where my impulse not to keep others waiting puts me in the awkward position of potentially inconveniencing the host by arriving before he or she is ready for guests.

In cases where I know the host well, I have made arrangements to come over early and help with prep just so I won’t have to go through this anxiety.  In cases where the host is an acquaintance, I have sat in my car contemplating which is more awkward:  to be the only person at the party or to be seen sitting outside in my car.  This led to the practice of drive-bys.

Tonight, when we decide to pay the check and start over when our friends arrive, I try to dispel my anxiety by tipping the waitress generously.  Apparently it wasn’t generous enough because she doesn’t seem to notice and I am still anxious.

Our friends arrive and I’m relieved that one of them orders food.  I order another margarita not because I want to drink it but just to try to run up our tab a bit.  When it comes, I take two sips and realize that I desperately need water, but I’m not about to ask for it.

After everyone has had their fill of food and beverages, we decide to head over to Vivienne’s house.  I tip the waitress more generously this time.  I do a calculation of what her total tips would have been had she turned the table over 2x with 4 people ordering entrees, which seems about right since we’ve now been there 3 1/2 hours.  Apparently I did my math correctly; this time she smiles at me and says thank you when she walks by after taking the checks.

Now that I have alleviated my anxiety, I relax and enjoy this collection of women.  We are an eclectic mix.  Gina and I became the best of friends after sharing an office at work.  Interestingly, sharing office space seems to work well for me when it comes to making friends.  Many of the closest friends I have are women I shared space with most of the day Monday-Friday for some period of my life.  My other friends, Andrea and Vivienne, I met through Gina.

The three of them, along with a collection of other wise and wonderful women, had formed a book club around Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth.  Gina and I, as close as we were, had never ventured into such topics.  I was never particularly interested in anything related to “spirituality.”

It’s funny how you can push away something and have no interest in it and then it suddenly pops up at a moment some window opened a crack when you weren’t looking.

When I got past the point in life when I was dreaming about what my future would be like and instead realizing that the future had come and gone while I wasn’t looking, I was left asking myself, “Is this it?”  As I matured (if that’s what we call it), drama receded into stability and with stability, life somehow lost its luster.  I suspect the timing of this sudden sense of disappointment was also a factor of not having children.  Without the distraction of young people taking up my time and energy, I had the space to notice that my life was disappointingly mediocre.

There I was with this little nagging feeling that there had to be more to life when Gina introduced me to Vivienne and Andrea and A New Earth.  For me, A New Earth introduced a new world.  The simple state of Being and simply feeling present allowed me to feel connected to life in a way I’d never felt before.  Although these teachings have apparently been around in countless forms for thousands of years, this book was like a portal into a realm I’d never entered before.  Unfortunately, like so many lessons in my life, it was fleeting and I found myself completely losing the ability to experience a sense of connectedness as quickly as I discovered it.

As I continued to explore Tolle’s teachings with my girlfriends, I got further away from the experience of and more into thinking about those teachings.  Eventually, we stopped pretending to be meeting about the book and just got together to socialize.  The realization that laughing and sharing together was a lot easier than seeking enlightenment overtook us.  Truthfully, a glass of wine with empathetic friends is its own form of enlightenment.

Now, at Vivienne’s house, Vivienne and Andrea introduce a new book to us.  It’s called Nonviolent Communication.  I have to smile.  I have been curious about Nonviolent Communication for some time.  I have seen flyers for workshops, received emails advertising classes, and seen references to it repetitively enough to realize the blinds have been pulled up even if the window hadn’t quite opened yet.  Now, here is a book on the topic and friends who want to learn it’s content together.

I am thrilled to have something new to read and secretly hope it will help me reestablish my lost connection.  But a little bell goes off in my head somewhere behind all the excitement: seeking is not the way to find.  Being is just being and you can’t find it by looking for it; you find it by doing it.  I am reminded of one of my favorite Yoda quotes (gotta love StarWars wisdom):  “Do or do not; there is no try.”

I appreciate the wisdom and insights my friends bring to our discussion.  Every time I talk with them, I learn something new and have many ah-ha moments.  It’s funny how addictive momentary insight can be.  It gives me the impression that I’m getting somewhere.

As we wind down the evening, I wonder how much of this book will actually make its way into daily practice in my life.  I wonder what space I will need to make for it and how much time incorporating it will take.  I wonder why reading about changing behavior is so exciting while actually changing it is so burdensome.  I think about the cycle of hope and despair that comes from the belief that we can change.  That we can be better people. We can feel connected and fulfilled.  And then, the realization that maybe we can, but it’s hard.  It requires making choices–consciously stopping mindless habits that happen on autopilot and choosing a new way instead.  Finding the energy to even notice mindless habits is often the most difficult part.  I smile, amused at myself, as I think, “Maybe this time it will be different.”

Special Ed

Posted by dkrashb on

When Pat drops me off at the office, I head to the cafeteria to grab some breakfast.  I decide to stop by the gym to say hello to my former workout buddies.  The gym looks dark.  I swipe my badge anyway, but the door doesn’t unlock.  I stand there perplexed for a moment.  If I felt like a visitor yesterday, I feel doubly so today–I worked on this campus for 5 1/2 years and the only time my badge failed to open the fitness center door was when I broke it in half.  I’m a bit indignant about being locked out of the gym, but I remind myself that it’s lucky I decided not to show up un-showered and in my gym clothes only to discover I couldn’t get in.

After a full morning of back-to-back conference calls, I dash down a flight of stairs to meet up with a couple of my friends who are taking time out to have lunch with me.  I arrive still on the phone, but manage to get off the phone before we get into the car.  We decide on Chinese and head to a local favorite.

An interesting phenomena of having a blog in which you record much of your life is how conversations go with your friends when you see them again.  Many seem to feel obligated to read your blog and will apologize for not keeping up with it.  I am not offended by people not reading my blog.  While I like having an imaginary audience because it seems to keep me writing, which is my real goal, knowing that my real audience is busy and often doesn’t have time to read my blog takes away some of the anxiety about “what will people think?”

Vince, however, does not feel obligated or apologetic when it comes to reading my blog.  He simply says, “too many words.”  I am not offended by this either.  After all, I’ve made a personal choice to write my blog because I want to develop a habit of writing.  While I know I should be reading too, I’ve not made the choice to make time for reading.  I do not surf other people’s blogs except to take a quick look at people who leave an indication that they’ve read mine.  When someone who also has a blog clicks the “like” button on one of my blog entries, I take a quick look at what they are posting out of a curiosity to understand what they liked about mine.

Recently, a photographer and blogger “liked” several of my blog entries.  When I go to his blog, I see that he is an artist–someone with vision.  When I look at his work, I immediately see the difference in what I do and what he does; the stark contrast between “having fun with it” and creating actual art.  I ponder why he reads my blog at all and wonder what he likes about it.  I am too intimidated by his talent to give him a “like” in return.  I find myself hoping he reads this entry and than alternately worrying that he will.  My admiration makes me feel foolish.

The fact that my friends do not read every entry in my blog is actually helpful–otherwise, I really would have nothing new to say to them after not seeing them for 6 weeks.  I tell them about my realization that I suffer from a learning disability when it comes to hang gliding and the empathy that I have suddenly discovered for all the people whom I’ve known in my life whom I judged as stupid because they didn’t have a talent that I had.  If nothing else comes from hang gliding, I am at least reminded of the Zen lesson of allowing the ego to be diminished.

Humility is a difficult lesson in the end.  In my complete incompetence, I have realized that a lifetime of making humiliating experiences into funny stories is not the same thing as having humility.  It seems I have taken the approach of creating a good defense by taking the offense in the form of discovering and revealing my personal weaknesses before anyone else does.  As if me announcing I suck at something before anyone else does makes it all right.

What I learn now is that humility felt purely comes not from a fear of others finding you out before you do, but from compassion and empathy and the understanding that I am no better than anyone else.  I am reminded of a recording of Marianne Williamson a dear friend loaned me for 3 years until I finally listened to it out of guilt.  The quote I recall vividly from that multi-CD set is: “You are not special.”

This is what I do not explain to my friends:  What I get from hang gliding is the visceral realization that I am not special; I am as limited and inadequate as everyone else. I have intellectually feared and suspected this all along, but when I hang glide, I feel the truth of it physically.  The physical realization of this fact leads to the physical sense of humility.

Turns out that when I thought I was feeling humility before, I was really feeling shame.  The difference between the two is striking.  Humility sneaks over me gently, making me feel more connected to others, more part of the whole of life.  Shame strikes suddenly at my gut, causing me to shrink within myself, feeling alienated and alone.  When I am shameful, I am full of fear.  When I am humble, I feel remarkably safe.  I hold on to this fleeting feeling just long enough to understand that it’s a breakthrough moment.  But like all breakthroughs (at least for me), they appear suddenly and briefly, only to retreat to be learned all over again at a later date.

I shake away a sense of sudden vulnerability I feel and return to my social self.  I become effusive; I can’t stop talking.  It’s as if I shield the soft places with a torrent of words, distracting from what’s important but frightening.  Afterwards, I think about my friends and wonder why they even make time for me when all I do is babble at them.  I think about how lucky I am to have patient and caring people in my life.  Maybe my luck with friends makes me special?  No, no.  I am not special.