When I lived on Maui for a summer, people used to say, “The good stuff is always behind a ‘No Trespassing’ sign.” It was risky. But it was truth. When I got to the end of a dirt road in the jungle or the end of a trail at the cliff’s edge, I’d find a ‘No Trespassing’ sign. If I peered around it, there would always be a faint but definite trail, and down those trails lived the best cliff jumps, coves, waterfalls, and energy vortexes.
I can’t remember the podcast or the person that said it, but I heard this week that people in the United States are living at the lowest levels of risk since our country’s inception. This makes sense. Our country is affluent. Why risk it for the biscuit when you have all the biscuits you need?
Because the biscuit tastes like shit without a dash of risk.
(As an aside, might this dearth of risk contribute to our mental health crisis?)
The alarm blares to my right. I roll over and snooze it. Twice. When it blares for the third time, I admit defeat. If I hope to keep my job as a resident, I will have to get out of bed. Though, before I sit up, I ask myself, “When will I feel alive again?” I remember when I did. I remember the intensity I lived with. The memory makes me sad. As I make coffee, stretch, and shower, I dream of a life where I feel alive again.
That, largely, was my life during residency. I did a lot of day-dreaming. When I wasn’t lost in my dreams, I stalled my mid-life crisis in the surf or on the mountain bike, where a modicum of risk did live. I was keeping hope alive, until one day I’d possess a blissful life again. I thought what I needed was more joy, purpose, and happiness.
I didn’t need joy. I needed risk.
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This week, I was talking with my wife as we got ready for bed. It seems, on each plane of our life, a seismic shift has occurred in the past year. And as it goes with change, it hasn’t always been joyful, nor has it been pleasant. Change has mostly been a right hook to the jaw. Though, as we talked, we kept smiling and laughing. I told her I’d never felt as alive as I do right here.
This moment, where I’m surrounded by risky wilderness and trying to find my way, is the biscuit. This is the good stuff. This is what I always wanted. This is living beyond the “No Trespassing” sign.
Once, I had permanent security and salvation on minimal risk; there, I lost who I was. Now, I have aliveness again, and only by a full embrace of risk, can I expect to keep it.
Every Friday morning, I send out an email, seeking camaraderie on the trail to a life we love. If you’d like join me, sign up here.
(Photo Caption: on Maui, beyond the warning signs, getting my first tastes of aliveness, tastes I’d need to survive what was to come.)
