Going Full Circle on Fear

Truly the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.   FDR had his heart in the right place.   And as he faced a country in the grips of the great depression he took the podium and gave a speech meant to be heard by all Americans.  During the campaign Roosevelt was criticized for not divulging his plans for the country that he was aiming to lead.  Not many of his close working relationships, aside from his wife, even knew him that well.   His speeches were buoyant and optimistic, yet solemn as the economic doldrums affected the national demographic.  It seems that these characteristics would have worked against FDR, yet he still triumphed the challenges before succumbing to illness.   Many great things came about from his presidency.

First off, FDR was the only president to serve more than two terms, acting as president for four consecutive terms, though his poor health decided his fate early in his fourth term.   During these terms he created the New Deal, and its vast array of programs, and dealt with World War II.   Legacies such as the Social Security System, the SEC, the FDIC and the National Labor Review Board are the signs of his time spent leading the nation.  His presidency was monumental to say the least.

Today we find ourselves facing a world of eternal challenge and have faithfully elected a president who is capable of greatness.  However, Barack Obama is more often compared to JFK than FDR.  This association is likely due to his energetic and youthful nature, air of sincerity and sense of responsibility that has brought the people together in a time when a leader was desperately needed.  Anyone can be a decider, but few can be a leader.  With the dismal economy and the constant war on terror, Obama seems aligned to take steps that coincide more with the absolute and enduring impact that FDR had on our country.  Assuming all goes well maybe we will get lucky and Obama will have a chance at more than two terms.

To bring this thought on course, it is the lack of fear that Barack shows towards an agenda that has nothing but daunting tasks in its lineup.  The thought alone of what he faces in his daily planner is daunting: stabilize the economy, create 3 million jobs, rekindle respect for the US, nurture the national hope, broker some peace in the world and raise to daughters in an urban environment.  Though, going on a first couple weeks impression, it suggests the right man was chosen for the hardest job in the world and his outlook appears to be that the man is at least as great as the task.  Thus, the only thing that Barack fears, is fear itself.  And maybe another crackberry crash.

Now, to lower the bar to a human level, yet keep with the theme, I look back at some of the situations I have put myself into and the fear I faced.  Now I wonder if it was really just fear.  The first on that list of fearful situations is when I climbed the Nose Route on El Capitan in Yosemite with my friends, Tim Kemple and Dave Hume.  It was twenty three and a half hours of jugging and climbing.  The two rope guns definitely took the lion’s share of the sharp end, but I got my fill as well.  Aiding the Great Roof and bounding through the joyous laybacking of the pancake flake had to be some of the most fun big walling on granite I have ever encountered.  Yet waiting just a handful of pitches above was the last jumar to top out.

Cutting loose from the last belay there is over 3,000 feet of air underneath you that drops away and comes back as up drafts, one of which stole my chalk bag a few pitches earlier.  I felt the knot slide off as I was lay-backing and I watched the bag rise from behind me and get carried off on a breeze.  I never did find it and was entranced by the sack as it danced away on a cloud of its own chalk.  When I saw the movie, American Beauty, the video of the plastic bag dancing brought me right back to that moment in time, the blur of Middle Cathedral standing in the background.

As my hand left the final belay and I started to swing out, a host of thoughts bombarded my mind. First I thought to close my eyes, but my eyes would not close.  Instead they just stared down and around at the abyss that could swallow me at any second.  Then, all of the falls and abuse that the little pink PMI rope ever took catalogued themselves in my brain; I should not be using this cord.  Knowing that over-thinking never solves a situation I just set my feet and started jugging.

Every heave on the rope created a new and stomach twisting creak.  After each upstroke I caught myself staring at the taut rope as it pointed straight up and went over the edge of the capstone above.   Each jerky movement of that free-hanging jumar made the rope drag side to side on the rough granite above.  Was that a core shot I could see or a figment of my glycogen deprived brain.  Honestly I probably should have puked my fear right out and into the void below.   Yet the idea of someone getting killed by a vomit rocket at terminal velocity did not sit well with me.  Also that we had run out of food and water about 10,000 burnt calories before, I doubt anything would have arisen anyway.  To my great relief, the cord held and I made it over the top and then endured one of the most epic walkoffs ever, but that is a whole other story.

So, as you know, I am still here to relay the story. That must mean that the fear, of real and present danger, is still just fear.  If finishing off that route was so inevitably fatal then no one would endeavor to take on equal or greater gauntlets.  When we find ourselves in front of a demanding task that seems greater than ourselves for one reason or another, one only needs to slow down and acknowledge a couple simple truths:

• We probably would not be there if we could not handle the situation and succeed at the task.
• Confidence and calmness will aide you as you ready the necessary tools and engage yourself.
• There is nothing to fear, but fear itself.

As for that little pink cord, that was its last journey.  Not a bad way to finish.  If you are ever in Yosemite, follow the Merced river down to El Portal.  A little past the post office there is a pull out on the left for a great swimming hole.  The rope swing on the tree across the river is where that mighty pink rope makes its last stand.  How it got up there was a whole other story as well, but fear not and go swing on it.

The Secret

After a few tries I finally had a break through with a no-knead dough recipe.  The crumb was not sticky, it rose well and the crust was ideal.  Though there were still no mega fissures that make me think I cracked the code (yes, multilevel pun intended).  I’m going to have to will cracks into the next Boule or at least make some cuts to invite them.  It is the law of attraction, right?  I want a good cracked crust so I shall envision it and it will happen.  Or is it that statistics on the surface tension of baking bread correlated to escaping moisture will probably rule in my favor before long.  My trick was just actually kneading the thing for thirty seconds because somewhere deep inside of me I associate dough with kneading.

Let’s, however, revisit this Law of Attraction thing.  So maybe I am a little late for the bandwagon, though it is thousands of years in the rumbling, but I never really caught on to this secret phenom-hype.  A proper origin in the eyes of modern media seems to be back with the Babylonians, then through every great mind in the last few thousand years before it came back around the turn of the century with Haanel’s The Master Key System.  More currently we have seen the movement that started with What the ^&! Do We Know and, then, The Secret.

This faith system, based on wanting, believing and receiving seems to ride the fence between sacred and silly.  There are few people who would want to believe this more than myself.  That there is a methodology, a practice if you will, about believing so hard in what you want that it eventually, and coincidentally, arrives at your feet.  Whether by mail or by you walking there I do not know.  I do not know because I have not progressed beyond the trailer.  Every alternative media source, including Youtube, seems to have an issue with their version of The Secret.  The strange thing, and I shit you not, is that all the videos lock up after two seconds on the timer.  This happened with almost a dozen efforts at different sources.  Who and/or what does not want me to discover the secret?

It seems that I might have to will the dollars out of my pocket to find out more.  In Borders today I sat down and read a handful of pages and felt that the small, only sold in hardcover according to the sales clerk, book had a repetitive message about asking (politely I would imagine), believing and then receiving.  Does this mean that if I want to go to Cuba with some friends that I can will my ticket and the non-stamping of my visa?  Or does it mean using my AmEx and greasing a couple palms along the way?

Blog after blog had skeptics or hand-over-fist believers.  Anything that carries two extreme sides is definitely worth looking at…I mean take our current bipartisan political system.  Some tout that the hooey is beyond belief and that platinum shovels were hand-forged for this effort, citing all sorts of thoughts and opinions.  My favorite satirical remark was by Emily Yoffe, a contributor for Slate magazine.  She references the fact that The Secret labels Einstein as a master of the secret, and a teacher too.  Yoffe printed a quote from Einstein that did not make it into the film: Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

Does this mean falling for the secret is part of our fallible nature or looking by something so simple is the plight of our specie?

Inside of me is the x-files lover of unexplained phenomena that wants to believe.  Does it seem remarkably simple?  Yes.  This is part of why this book is found under the genre: metaphysical; on the shelf next to the fill-in-the-blank self-help series.  But what if it is just a basic strength-of-mind trick that allows us to breakdown unseen barriers and find ourselves in opportunistic situations where we empower ourselves to make a decision that grants us a new opening.  Coincidental or not, we have all had things happen to us that have seemed oddly situated and plucked us out of a negative situation and into the womb of positive.  I have the perfect example.

In the late summer of 2002 I was running a kayaking outfitter in southern New Jersey, yet dating a girl in eastern Ohio who was assistant coaching the Buck Eyes field hockey team.  On a whim I decided to drive out and surprise her for the first game of the season that started at noon the next day.  I left at one a.m. on a ten hour drive.  For the mathematically challenged, this does not leave me with much room for error.  I felt this to be a testament as to my affections, so I drove for four hours and pulled over near Harrisburg for a short road nap.  Awaking to a complete fog that had settled on the highway amidst agricultural fields I attempted to start the car.  No dice.  Not even a small click.  Before falling asleep I forgot to turn the lights off.  Now I would never make my narrow window of time.

Exiting the car gave me no more information.  No mile-markers or highway signs were visible in the two minutes I ran in both directions.  The milk-mustached blonde bombshell on the billboard seemed to taunt me in my predicament.  Inside I almost cracked as I wanted to be there with her so bad, but I could not will the situation any more.  Standing outside of my car, ferrari red Riot Glide on top, hull down, I began to dial AAA for assistance, not sure what I would tell them.  Maybe they could triangulate my position.  Before I could hit send, a Jeep Cherokee emerges from the fog and passes me.  It has three white water boats on top.  Stopping a hundred yards ahead, I soon hear the unmistakable whine of a car backing up a high speed.  The driver was a guy I met almost two years before running my first river in Massachusetts, he was on his way to the Youghiogheny River in western PA.

In five minutes my battery was charged, the car running and we were both on our way.  I still have his business card that he gave me that day.  On the back I wrote, ‘get out of jail free card’.  Never would I forget why.  I had not seen him since I ran the Deerfield two years before and I have not seen him since.

Back in my ride, amp’d by the forces that converged on that six am pea soup on the highway between no where and no where, I drove with purpose.  In the end I did get to see Erin before her first game, arriving wired and ecstatic maybe thirty minutes before the start.  She was truly someone who I wanted to see and something allowed it to happen.

So when I ask myself if I believe, I think I do.  I mean…ahem, I do.  But what I do not believe is in paying that much more for it.  In my life I can say I have met one person who wills things and they happen, a true alpha if I ever met one.  Anyone who has crossed his path knows exactly what I am talking about.  Tim Kemple is a guy that makes things happen.  I have a lot of friends that have prospered and been successful on different paths, but Tim always seemed different.  More mono-focally directed.  Whether or not he believes in the laws of attraction, I do not know.  I have not asked him yet, but I am sure he would talk about it.  If anything, Tim just makes what he wants, because that is the way it should be.

We all have an innate ability to create opportunity.  Just like we all have had some wildly perfect experience that has allowed us to make things happen.  We also all know someone in our lives who was the person you never doubted to obtain that which they put their mind towards.  Putting ourselves on the line more often would reveal this.  If there is something I have learned from climbing rocks it is this: want it, envision it, make it happen.  It is that simple.  So simple I may be able to talk myself out of it, before I realize that I already believe it.

Having now re-convinced myself in the power of positive thinking I will aim to apply it to a handful of goals upon which my focus rests.  Positive thinking will entail doing the proper research, being experimental yet scientific.  Taking logical steps from the intermediate outcomes and trying to always be psyched.  This whole process does not sound like much of a secret, just a lot of work.  But we often find that if the work is towards a goal we want, then it feels a lot less like work.  And when breaks are made in our favor we can look at them as coincidental or predicated by the endeavor we invest.  I am reminded of a quote that an old friend gave me my freshman year of college.  Originally it is attributed to Socrates, but when he gave it to me it was through another source: The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.

Right now I would settle for the secret to a great bread.  My own endeavoring got me a $40 enameled cast iron pot that I named Castirona.  I thought I was going to have to throw down two hundred bones for a Le Creuset pot.  Instead I endeavored and the solution appeared.  Now I will endeavor my next crust to appear to crack.