I am a part of a small kayak club that gathers on Saturday nights in the off-season at the local pool. The white-water paddle season here is very short so as the weather cools and the snows fall, we move indoors from November to April. One part social and the other part is simply getting some seat time and building new skills. This is important for paddlers who want to be just a little more than “recreational”.
New skills are good, and it’s important to grow as a paddler. But I believe what really gives someone confidence on the river is consistency. By consistency I mean getting out and doing it often, getting in lots of “seat-time” and repeating movement over and over. Knowing an effective power-stroke because its proven over and over. Slipping efficiently through waves and current, you’re focused but relaxed because you know how your boat feels on the river. It’s experience, it is muscle memory, it’s Flow.
Of course, you can get into trouble at anytime should you get a little lazy or careless. That is just the river keeping you honest. What I really want to touch on here is maintaining a level of acuity through consistency, or in its simplest form, not letting the skill perish.
Have you ever put down a good book, just to start in where you left off weeks later and had a hard time getting back into the story? Or a hobby you used to love, you got too busy for a while and now you’re fumbling through it. You just got back from that one-week holiday in Mexico and the guys at work wonder if you need to be retrained for a few days.
Whether it is sports, hobbies or your job, stepping away from the things you love to do and (or) are good at, can sometimes set you back. And sometimes taking a break from something, especially if it’s been a long time, can nearly snuff out any life it had left. Yes, even living life can be a kind of perishable skill.
What do I mean by that? Living as a perishable skill? I’ll give you an example.
I have spent the last 6 years making a very large transition in my life that required managing a huge financial and emotional load. A load that required me to trade in my spare time for work and my important obligations for urgent commitments. I gave up enjoyment for completing tasks, and freedom of my lifestyle for stability and security. I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but I didn’t think that my life as I previously knew and enjoyed it, might not be waiting for me when I got back. And sure enough, as I started to finish my transition and get back to my life, it was gone.
If living a life full of adventure and purpose were a skill I was honing just a few years ago, it was gone, it had become perishable. Now I have to remember what it was like but even harder is trying to remember how to get myself there. I know where I’d like to be but just as nerve wracking as it is to get into a boat in high-water in the spring after a winter off, I can’t help being nervous. Sure, I took up Paragliding and took a few trips in the last few years, that is still cool. But when you aren’t doing these things all the time, all you can think about is getting back “out-there”, and when you are “out-there” you just can’t wait till it’s over. It’s a strange juxtaposition, it doesn’t feel good on the couch, and it doesn’t feel good in the air.
That is where you find the boundary though, to that perishable skill, that perishable life. Just beyond that feeling of wanting to get-down while you are 1000’ feet above the landing field. Or dropping 800’ vertical feet over 18 kilometers of winter mountain runoff. That point where you want it to be over and you’d be happy to trade this in for comfort. If you just relax and stay for a few more minutes you might remember why you are here and be honest with yourself.
And I have be honest. I think I do these things because I don’t want to be comfortable, I want to be scared. I want to be at a place where I want to go home but if I force myself to go a little further, I might find myself again. I might remember what it’s like to live, to be part of the adventure to maintain this skill, this perishable skill of living life in the moment. It doesn’t feel good right now but if I keep at it, I think I could feel it again.
So, like getting my seat-time in the pool on a cold and snowy Saturday night, I’ll hang out with my friends and keep at it until my skills improve. I’ll make the decision to go whether I am feeling motivated or not. And I’ll start to remember that the adventure, that the actual “living” part comes when I move past comfort and really enjoy the whole process in the moment.
What are you doing to maintain your “perishable” skill?
