Listening to the Tree Girl

If I had one wish.... I think I'd pass.... I can't think of anything I need.

That's exactly how I felt this morning as I got into the pool. The outdoor 50 meter pool with my Masters Team. Scratch that, with the Homeboys. Masters is on break for a few weeks and swimming just never feels the same without the guys.

The air was warm, the water was perfect, the sun was shining and swimming for 90 minutes felt just awesome. I felt more than lucky, more than privileged and more than grateful. Love this life.... I kept thinking.... love this life.

Last evening I attended a lecture at my yoga studio. The lecture was given by Julia Butterfly Hill. To make it real simple she is the woman who sat eighteen stories high in a Redwood tree.... for 2 years. I expected the lecture to be a story about what it was like to sit in a tree for 2 years in order to save the Redwood Forrest.

But it wasn't. On the way out I bought her book because now I want to know. And now I realize that sitting in the tree wasn't as much about actually sitting in a tree as it was about believing in something, including herself, finding strength, courage and fighting from her heart.

The lecture was actually a conversation and if I had to title it, I would not be able to. It might have been about finding spirit, it might have been about understanding that as people the small things we can do can make big differences in the world..... but one point has resonated with me.

When we ask for strength life ... or the universe... or whatever... will often give us hardship. It is through hardship that strength is built. It is through hardship that grace arrives. It is through hardship that courage is found.... and we fight through with love.

That point right there can be applied to so many situations in my own life. Like she labeled everything to a T.... and I didn't know it was laying around unlabeled.

Now we can use the Ironman as a metaphor because it is an easy one to use. The Ironman is also easy because it is gigantic. But take out the word Ironman and insert your word. It's truly all the same. Ironman is a safe example to use.

It's really what Randy Pauch would call a "head Fake", meaning we are learning something really hard.... by thinking we are learning something fun. In our sick way IM is fun. But that's another study.

Many take the Ironman on because we want to be stronger or find out how strong we really are. We all have our own personal reason. We are faced with the difficulty of it, not necessarily the day itself but the year of preparation. Fatigue, soreness, self doubt, uncertainty, colds, scheduling, balancing..... etc.

So we find ways to balance it all. We get up at 5am so we don't miss our children's baseball games. We sometimes get up at 3am for the same reason. We run in the dark. We hang tough through days where our eyes don't stay open. We feel weak and wonder how this is all supposed to make us stronger.

Through this time we find our own courage. Self doubt starts to become self confidence. Uncertainty begins to become certainty.

I just have to insert here that Ironman is just an example, as we choose to do this, as it is not our right but our privilege, but any word can be replace the word Ironman.

The day of the race comes along and we are not the same people who we were a year ago, but there is still a bit to go. We travel through the day on all the courage, grace and strength we have built up through the past "X" months.

What kept us going was the love for what we were doing and the love of who we were becoming. Love is the biggest and strongest energy force there is an whether it is sport, life, nature it is all the same. It's the biggest.

So the love for what we believed in was the energy that brought us through. Through something hard we learned how to be strong. Through something hard we found courage and we found grace.

For me that's really what this is all about. I can apply that to many situations, many much more important than a 140.6 mile race, and I can see it very clearly.

When we ask for strength and we are given something hard...... it is to make us find that strength. Really.... all that we need is inside of us right here and right now. That one more thing really isn't true...... that when I finish the Ironman... when I get married..... when I get a house..... that when I mentality.

Because again, all we need is within us right now. Uncover it. Strip the bullshit away and look at you. Look what sustains you when everything else falls away.

What would I sit in a tree for? I began to wonder that on my way home. Not that I'd actually sit in a tree.... but what would be the thing that I'd "sit in a tree" for? I thought for a moment and then it came to me. It's what I have the opportunity to do this fall in Haiti. Defined... it doesn't matter except that it was very clear to me. That's a whole separate post. As I identified it though, my heart agreed. Yes, I know what I'd sit in a tree for,

I feel lucky this morning for so many things. Mostly for clarity and for Julia Butterfly Hill making it a lot less complicated and so crystal clear. While we think the changes we can make in this world are small.... they are actually very very big.