Santa Cruz, part of the Channel Islands National Park, is a 22 miles long protected island 20 miles off the Southern California coast. In the spring it is a marvel of undulating ridges, verdant valleys, flowering trees, tall grasses, and wildflowers in bloom. From the cliffs you can see clearly the California Coast straight out, or if you look down, clear, clear waters where schools of bright orange and purple colored fish float between kelp blooms, eating and evading diving Pelicans, gulls, and terns. I’ve been in few places that are more beautiful, quiet, or peaceful than Santa Cruz Island.
And because of that unique beauty, and the fact that visitors are only given 5 hours if they aren’t camping, I really wanted to get the most out of my day on the island even though I was fighting a cold. So, I’d scouted out the hiking options in advance – and per usual – had picked the longest and hardest hike to the top of the tallest peak believing that was my best chance to maximize the number of beautiful things I’d see. My sickness wasn’t severe, and I’ve gutted through much worse in the past. After all, this was a unique opportunity.
Believing I was learning from my past experiences that “more time just sitting in silence in a beautiful place is better,” I rushed as quickly to the top as I could so that I could maximize the amount of time I’d have to sit and enjoy the view there. It was exhausting, and my pack never felt heavier as I was carrying multiple lens, binoculars, a change of clothes, water, and food. Despite this, I enjoyed my hike up, stopping to take some pictures now and then, but never allowing myself to take any sitting breaks.
When I got to the summit, as I was putting my bag down, I lost my balance. As I went to steady myself, my camera slipped out of my hand, dropping straight down onto a rock, smashing through not only my lens cap but also the glass of both my filter and lens.
While I felt proud that I didn’t react with anger when it happened (as I would have done in the past), by the afternoon I realized this accident was pointing me toward a deeper truth. One that I’ve been wrestling with repeatedly on this trip, but have been loath to accept.
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When I started this journey, I wrote in this blog about how in 2018 I accomplished more on paper than any year previously in my life, and yet by January I’d never felt more disillusioned with my position on the “achievement path.” In declaring this sabbatical, and refusing to look for work for the remainder of 2019, I believed I was firmly stepping off that path into a great unknown, from which I hoped a new and “better” way of being would emerge.
And yet, even though I’m not earning (or even trying to earn) a dime this year (which is what I thought constituted the old path), I’m coming to see just how hard it is to leave my old path behind on a spiritual level. As my friend Martin astutely observed to me in an email about a month ago, “It still feels a bit like you continue on an achievement path.”
If I honestly look at these first two months, I realize it continues to be hard for me to let go of my need every day to find things to accomplish, and to let go of fear that I’m not “maximizing my experience” (whatever that might mean). Despite a meditation practice most mornings, I’m finding it hard to just “be” in the day. As proof, in checking my FitBit just now, I see that the first six weeks on the road I’ve averaged fewer than six hours of sleep a night (less than when I was working) and 50 miles of hiking per week. This is all in addition to visiting 12 national parks, taking 300 gigabytes of photos, and writing 18 blog posts.
I know how precious this opportunity is. Even being a year-long, I can feel time passing, and it’s hard not to slip into a state of agitation about how much there still is to see, to do, and to write. I often stop mid-step to wonder when will I ever be in some of these places again? When will I ever have this much time? In those moments I feel a overwhelming desire to re-buckle down, focus on what’s important, cut out what’s not, and live this moment as fully as I can.
The irony isn’t lost on me that I’ve written about variations of this struggle repeatedly in my prior posts. In them, I’ve noted how I’ve discovered the best thoughts, images, and conversations when I fight this urge – when I slow down, stop, and just sit somewhere. Yet, when I reflect further what I’m coming to see is that those moments were often a result of accidents. Many of them occurred after I fell asleep on mountain side, or was sitting down because I couldn’t move any further.
As I was thinking about this on the boat ride back from the island our boat passed a super pod of dolphins. There were literally hundreds of them on the surface and captain said likely thousands below as well. They were so close to the boat that I could hear them clicking and singing to each other as loudly as if they were being projected over the boat’s speaker system. As we sped up, a great group of them sped up too, taking turns jumping high out of our wake in pure delight. They were playing simply for the sake of playing.
How many times in my life have I done that? I’ve had days of lethargy and gluttony (in fairness not many); but when I have I simply played with total purposeless joy simply because it felt good to do so – completely impervious to the ways others were looking at me, completely disregarding whether what I was doing had any broader social purpose – and not beat myself up with guilt about it later?
I remember on a certain college application I was asked to describe myself in three words. The first word that came to me was “grit.” I’ve been proud of that word my whole life. I even had a large picture of Bernini’s David in my bedroom for years because it so embodied to me the look for sheer determination that I believed was required to accomplish “anything worth accomplishing” in life. And it has taken me incredible places. Grit helped me push through physical pain to run my first marathon at 13 years old; it helped me push through social stigma and the mental challenges of being born with severe learning disabilities in order to graduate with top departmental honors in multiple subjects in high school and college, as well as earning a perfect SAT score. More recently, grit helped me break into a competitive field that I had no training in and then excel in it for years. I was, and still am, proud of these accomplishments.
And yet, grit (and my unhealthy demand that I live it out at all times) has been my harmatia too – a source of blindness that has done much more damage than just breaking a few cameras and spraining a few ankles. It has literally destroyed many of the most important personal and professional relationships in my life. Specifically, by believing grit was always the answer, I inadvertently created a self-centered and self-isolating worldview which led me to patronize other’s struggles (if they are struggling it’s because they aren’t trying hard enough), become blind to my own needs, and fearful of entering into spaces (such as direct interpersonal conflicts) where sheer effort couldn’t get me where I wanted to go.
This journey is showing me is that there are certain doors I want to walk through now where my over-reliance and trust in grit will keep me from ever entering (whether it be true authentic connection with others, full creative expression, comfort with ambiguity and risk, and joyful being). Yes, grit has helped (and likely will continue to help) me in immeasurable ways, but to go on further will require me to learn with equal dexterity how (and when) to play, trust, and surrender too.
I wish it was as simple as letting go of grit, of jumping off the achievement path, but I see now that is silly too. Grit has been important part of who I am. It has shaped the path which has brought me here. And for that I should be thankful. But it need not be my most important tool any longer. I need to learn how to use it when it helps me, and let it go when it doesn’t. Perhaps, as a first step, I should leave up that Bernini when I get home, and also put up photo of dolphins at play too.
