Category Archives: Fears

Grazing Cows or Gazing Anxiety

I was getting more and more worried. Stress was increasing with every 18 wheeler that blew past my 4 cylinder rice burner, going a bit more slowly than I should have been. HONK! Sorry, I mumble under my breath. I should see the turnoff by now, where is it? I check my watch. Still ten minutes. Look around. No turnoff. What if I missed it? I don’t know where the next one is. I’m in the middle of about a million rolling hills populated by grazing cows. They sure don’t seem stressed. Don’t they know what they’re in for? I try to peek up ahead above the speeding traffic. Is that a turn off up there? Could that be me?

Not completely unlike when I was sitting across from Cheryl. Nervous. Shaky. Eyes briefly making contact then quickly escaping into the many available distractions around us.

“So, uh, what do you like to do?”

“Um, play tennis, and uh,” deep breath, “uh, you, know, stuff.”

“Wow. That sounds cool.”

I don’t remember leaving my brain at home. I was able to talk to her ok over the phone. Can’t the waiter come any quicker? Maybe I can spend an hour pretending to thoughtfully think of something interesting, while I’m looking at the menu, or maybe he will spill something on me so I can think of a reason to bail out. It’s not like this is my first time. Why is asking one person a simple question seem so much more difficult than asking somebody else the exact same thing? It works the same way, right? Brain makes thought, thought goes to vocal cords, mouth and lips and tongue move, sound comes out. It’s not like I’m going to do something different this time, am I?

My friend never has this problem. Of course he is a firefighter, and everybody knows that firefighters attract girls like Bill Gates can attract money. He was telling me the other day about this training exercise, where they have this old building set up, and they practice going in and putting out the fire. And I asked him, “why don’t you practice on different buildings?” He told me that most buildings basically have the same structure. They might look different on the outside, but on the inside they are similar enough. And when you train frequently, you start to to realize that what something looks like on the outside doesn’t really matter. All you really need to do is be able to notice the structure. And sometimes I ask  him why he doesn’t always have girls surrounding him. He told me he was tired of having the same conversations over and over and over.  He says that he learned that when you stay with something long enough, you really start to notice the small things that make you realize that this person stands out from the rest.

So anyways, after we ordered, it got a bit easier to talk, because she asked me if I was as nervous as she was. When I gladly said yes, that kind of broke the ice a little bit. I guess we both agreed on some level that it’s ok to embrace being nervous. We actually ended up not having that much in common, but it was an enjoyable conversation anyhow. And after I arrived at my destination on time, (actually five minutes early, because I hit all the green lights after I realized the exit was indeed mine) I was able to have another enjoyable chit chat with the suprisingly cute girl that was working there.

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The Blackrock Pass of Logic

“This one!”

“What’s it about?”

“Some guy that does some crazy stuff.”

“Oh, wait dude, look, that one is here!”

 

There were three of us. At the new multiplex. Thirty screens. 6 new releases, and two blockbusters (after only one weekend) all starting within 40 minutes of each other.  If we had another two hours, maybe we could come to a decision. Too many choices. We hadn’t even gotten in line yet. I had a pretty good idea, what I’d though we’d all enjoy, but…

Kind of like when me and two of my other buddies were backpacking. We had a four day trip planned, and we were on our second day in. We had three possible routes to take, all big loops, depending on the weather and the fishing. The only problem was, we’d only agreed that those two things would determine our choices. We didn’t take the time to consider how they would affect our choices.

“If we go left, we can fish some more.”

“Dude, I only caught three small ones, I’m done fishing.”

“Yea, but look at the map, these lakes are bigger, there’s bound to be bigger fish here.”

“Yea, but if we go this way, we can go over Blackrock pass. It says it’s the highest in the area. Think of the views, man!”

I didn’t really care either way. I only know that I didn’t beg and plead for two extra days off over the holiday weekend so I could listen to these two fools argue.

“Just make up your minds for pete’s sake!” I exhorted.

They reminded me of a buddy I used to have in law school.  He told me that once he was in a lecture, given by this professor that was famous for never losing an argument with his students. I mean never.  And this guy was going on and on, and my friend was certain that he’d made a logical mistake in his arguement. Not a big one mind you, but a small and noticeable one that might have a big impact the outcome of his arguement. Kind of like how Amelia Earhart is widely thought to have gotten lost by a mere fraction of a degree mistake, which added up.  Amazing what happens when you can make a small change and then just stand back and watch it grow. But the funny thing is, my friend, who is normally kind of shy, and doesn’t speak out much in class, somehow was able to tap into some magical source of confidence, like when you really know exactly what it is that you want, and you know exactly how you are going to get it. How many times have you been able to experience that knowing?  So anyways, my friend waited until just the right moment when he was able to exploit the advantage, and needless to say, the class was shocked. The professor was dumbstruck. He stood there for what my friend said was almost 5 minutes, which is a long time for a law professor to stand there and not say anything. A mime, yea, but not a law professor. Then someting funny happened. When my friend spoke, up, he didn’t know exactly what was going to happen. He was able to just say it, and allow for whatever result. After the five minutes (which in reality was probably more like thirty seconds), the professor started to clap. And then so did the rest of the class. The professor said it was a pleasure and a wonderful surprise to be so skillfully out argued by an undergraduate. It does feel really good to out argue somebody, when you really know your stuff, doesn’t it?

So I made up my mind, and took the trail to the left. I didn’t say anything, I didn’t give any reason. I just made my choice. If they followed me, great. If they didn’t, well, I drove so I had the car keys.  Funny thing was, we took the path to the pass, which did have some fantastically spectacular views, AND on the other wise were some great lakes, which had some pretty decent sized trout.

And as far as which movie we picked, we decided to decide over a couple of drinks, and we met some people, and, well, that’s another story.

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The Girl and the Physics Experiment

So I was at the beach last week with a friend of mine.  It was a beach with a strange wave phenomenom. The waves come in at an angle, and then they bounce off the jetty, and then remerge with themselves. Its kind of like an interference pattern in physics.  The cool part is that the beach comes up really fast under the water, and when the waves rejoin themselves, they double in size, and at the same time, they come up on a beach that gets really shallow, really quickly, so the waves are able to transform their energy to produce this instantly huge and rideable wave.  Most people there don’t surf with boards, rather, they body surf. Because the waves come up and crash onto sand so quickly, it’s too hard to bail out if you have too much junk tied around your ankle. And we were watching this one guy, bobbing around in the water, and it didn’t really look like he knew what he was doing. Suddenly a wave pulled him up, and it looked like he was going to be pitched onto the sand. I looked around to see if there were any ambulances on hand, as people have been known to break their necks here.

Then my friend starts telling about this guy that he knows. It seems he really likes this girl, but he just can’t get up the nerve to go and talk to her.  He said that whenever he sees her, he can think of good things that he wants to say, but when he gets close, he starts to imagine all the bad things that might happen, and those overpower the good things. In his mind, at least. So I say, “Well, next time you see this guy, why don’t you..” and then my friend interrupts me, and says that he hasn’t seen this guy in like two months. And I say “Oh, so he’s one of THOSE kinds of friends.” And my friend nods and says “Yea. Low maintenance.”

Like the kind of person that you can go for three or four years with out seeing this person, and then next time you happen to bump into them, you are able to instantly remember good times, like you just got off the phone, chatting and talking about remembering good experiences. And then when you see them, you can just pick up where you left off, and everything is cool. And my friend said, “yea, just like that.”  So I asked him if he knew or had met the girl, and he said he did, and I said “so is she cool?” And he said “Yea, she’s totally cool.” “So it’s all in his head?” “Yea, it’s all in his head.” And I suggested that maybe he should just relax. Because I’m sure you know that good things happen when you stay out of your own way.

So anyways, the guy takes off on the wave, and it instantly becomes clear that not only does the guy know what he’s doing, because he expertly barrel rolled himself out just at the right moment, but it turned out he was the guy we’d been talking about. And right after a great ride, he came up to his spot on the beach where his girlfriend, apparantly, was waiting. “Is that her?” “Wow, yea it is,” he said with a chuckle. He waved, she waved, then I waved. Then we went and got some tacos, which is another story.

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Guitar Playing Scottish Sharks

We had just arrived at the dive site. Or the snorkeling site in my case. I wasn’t licensed or trained or certified or qualified or whatever-ified enough to strap on one of those big metal cans of air AND a weight belt to make sure you sink enough so you can go down and look at the fish. Nope, I was strictly an ameteur fish looker atter. Except we really weren’t going to look at fish. Well, if we did see any fish, which were likely as we were at the second largest reef in the world, they would be secondary.  Yep, we were big game hunters, er, lookers. We were going to swim with sharks. When we heard about this while on dry land it sounded safe enough. “Sure, everybody does it!” He said. “Yes, of course, they’re completely safe!” He said.  Funny how that seemed to be less relavent as we were suiting up to dive in. You could see the sharks just below the surface, swimming around, big dark shapes of death moving constantly. Slowly. Waiting. “Are you sure it’s safe?” I asked, suddenly wishing I had decided to attend the Aztec Ruins excursion. “Yea, just jump in!” He said. I wasn’t too sure. Sharks were bad right? They ate people, right? Jaws was a shark, right? And why was our boat captain wearing such a funny hat? It sure didn’t look like a boat captain hat, although I’m not really sure what boat captain hats are supposed to look like. It just didn’t fit the image I’d had in mind.

Kind of like when I first arrived in Scotland. It was a friday night, I had no clue where to go, what to do. And everybody was wearing these funny hats. Well not everybody, some people had on hats that looked kind of normal.  But at the time I wasn’t interested in hats. I apparantly hadn’t remembered to plan well, becaue I wasn’t supposed to meet my friends from Texas for another two days. I don’t know why it didn’t dawn on me that I should probably plan ahead and book a hotel or something. I suppose I could find a hotel, but I didn’t really know where anything was. So I wandered around, past some park that was famous for some guy doing something that helped Scotland out in their past. And on the side of the park were a bunch of people singing and drinking and playing a guitar. I guess everybody all over the world knows how to have fun. They seemed to give off a really good vibe when they asked me to join them, but I passed. I was tired, and needed a place to sleep. I’d been traveling for about twenty hours. Then I saw him. And older guy. Much older. The kind of person that you imagine hates young people for some reason.  He kept eyeing me. Maybe he wanted something? Maybe I looked like the guy that got his daughter pregnant and then left her at the alter?  Who knows. He started walking towards me. Staring. Not shifting his eyes. Not even wearing a funny hat. He kept coming closer and closer, but I was tired, I was wearing a heavy backpack, and I just didn’t have the energy to put up a fight.

Similar to times when you don’t know what’s going on, and you just give in, and trust yourself. Like once during an acting class the teacher had us stand up on a table and fall foward into the waiting arms of our clasmates. All we had to do was trust strangers to help and support us as we fell. It was a pretty cool exercise. Another similar one was wear I was at a really wierd seminar, and this guy kept saying stuff like “trust is the secret, trust is the secret,” or something like that. There we had blindfolds on, and people led us around and instructed us to fall backwards into a chair without checking to make sure there was one there before we fell.  That was a fantastic experiene. Kind of when you just let go and for some reason can allow yourself to have faith that everything will be allright.

“Son, you look lost!” the old guy said, in the best Sean Connery Impersonation I’ve EVER heard, suddenly busting out a suprisingly full toothed grin. “Uh, yea,” I responded, relieved that he didn’t follow up his Sean Connery accent with some licensed to kill techniques. “Come with me……” I didn’t catch anything of what he said after that, as it was thick with local dialect and idioms that had I understood, I never would have forgotten. Twenty minutes later he led me to a row of Bed and Breakfasts. Five minutes after that I found myself immediately slipping into a nice peaceful sleep after slipping into some wonderfully soft and inviting sheets.

Just like when I let go of the railing and slipped into the water.  Not really slipped, more like splashed. And funny thing. As I plunked into the water, it seemed to startle the sharks. It seems they were more afraid of me than I was of them. They were only Nurse Sharks, and mostly fed on crabs and other stuff off the bottom. Another cool thing was after was able to realize that my fears were false I was really able to open my mind, and really appreciate the beauty that I otherwise would have missed due to my fears.

How many ways can you imagine being able to notice beauty around you when you release some of your fears?

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