Today I biked in the snow. Not something that happens very
often in San Francisco. Stuck out my tongue and drank in the flakes while
swerving around a few ice patches. Arrived with pants splattered with mud,
backpack frosted with white, wet gloves and chilled fingers— and yet happy as a
kid playing…well, out in the first snow.
Before coming to Salzburg, I looked at the weather
predictions and groaned. I was happily welcoming Spring in San Francisco, the
plums having peaked, cherries on their way and first leaves on the deciduous
trees I pass each day to school. Why was I going to Salzburg where Winter still
ruled? Who wants to be in a cold climate, bundling and unbundling, walking with
the wind whipping on your frozen face, trudging through snow turned to slush,
biking on ice patches squinting between the snow flakes? I’m too old for that
crap!
Or so I thought. Turns out I love it! Well, at least in
small doses. When I woke up this morning and saw the first snowflakes, my New
Jersey childhood memories were triggered and I remembered just how magical it
is. And how good it feels to be cold and wet and come in to dry off at the fire
with the requisite hot chocolate and such. Put on soft lights and listen to
Schubert’s Trout Quintet and feel the world wrap around you.
Why are we so obsessed with being constantly comfortable?
The hot chocolate tastes better and the Schubert sounds truer if we earn it by
some sense of battling the elements, of facing cold, wetness, hunger, leg pain
from the long walk or bike ride. I tell the people coming face-to-face with
their own frustrations, challenges and insecurities in my workshops that the
practice is to become comfortable with discomfort, in any of its many shapes or
forms. The “discomfort zone” is where a lot of the great stuff happens.
As always, I need to listen to my own advice. At my age, the
Florida retirement doesn’t sound as absurd as it used to, but it’s heartening
to know that I can enjoy something so inconvenient, dangerous, wild and damn
fun as riding a bike in the snow.
A road less traveled, I see. A startling choice: relax, accept, drop all resistence, surrender, and walk right to the center of the discomfort zone.
ReplyDeleteYour face, initially drawn tight, ducking from the annoyance of snow in your eyes became a face turned upward toward the sky, the tension in your eyelids released, a smile surfacing, and the annoyance of the weather was transformed into the joy of Christmas at the moment of your choosing!
Courage and absolute liberation, standing hand-in-hand at the heart of this place we instinctively avoid. But not you. You steered your bicycle straight to the center! And together you danced laughlingly over the ice.
Having returned to a surprising nine new posts on your blog since I unplugged myself for a week, I would call THIS your Salzburg explosion. And it definitely is resonating!