The Curse of Good Enough

I was a ridiculously talented kid. I made every travel soccer team. I made every travel baseball team. I made all but one travel basketball team. In travel sports I was always a contributor. In regular club leagues I was typically the leading scorer/best goalkeeper. When I played seeker, I snatched up that snitch like a dang boss. I was in one of those janky elementary school systems with a grading scale with E for Excellent, G for Good, S for Satisfactory, and NI for Needs Improvement. I have this great anecdote about when my parents came back from a student teacher conference and had me in tears because I had all Excellents and, without showing me the report card, they briefly convinced that E was just above F, rather than standing for Excellent, and I had straight E's. Actually, that's it. That's the whole story. I hope you got a good laugh. I was scarred for roughly two months.

After what I refer to as "The Golden Age of Clint," the other kids started catching up. By middle school, I wasn't quite as successful in sports or academics. High school came and I was rocking barely a 3.0 GPA while taking those notoriously grade boosting AP classes (This means I was closer to a C student than a B student. I really just did that math and came to that realization. I'm disappointed in you, High School Clint). By senior year, I got cut from the basketball team, representing utter failure in my favorite sport. The only sport I lettered in was lacrosse, and that was only because we were an underachieving club team that took anyone who would suit up. Picture the bad news bears slightly older with substance abuse and anger issues and prolific use of profanity.

I remember being bemused, but rather arrogantly proud as I sat across the table from an acceptance official at a university. The university official was calmly explaining to me that it didn't make sense for them to take a chance on accepting me. My SAT score was proportionately so much higher than my GPA that it was clear I just didn't try or care. I learned a light lesson from that experience. I put far more work in in college and graduated with one of those cum laude-type designations.

I learned enough of a lesson to improve my college performance, but I didn't learn the bigger lesson about life. I always believed that I just developed earlier than most and everyone caught up with and then passed me. I think there may be some truth to that. I was a great test taker and was a little taller than most of the others for a time. However, I don't think this is the whole story. I think I got comfortable with my slight advantage. I didn't strive for more. I think the others that I was a little ahead of definitely caught me, but most of them didn't pass me. A lot of people passed me because they learned how to work hard earlier than I did.

I was having a conversation with a new friend a week ago who had the same experience. We both believe we're talented enough to do most things proficiently. However, we both have strong doubts that we can truly excel at much of anything. We both have patterns of picking things up and being a star briefly, then falling to the middle, and often the back, of the pack. We hit some hard challenges and assume we're just not gifted in whatever field we're competing.

Early life typically only requires brief commitment, so those of us with a quick early learning curve shine. It's the marathons of life where we start to fall short. We're sprinters. We burn ourselves out, we become despondent as the others pass after our brief lead. We get beaten and embarrassed by those with endurance and discipline. The most discouraging part of this is that the marathons of life are all that matter. We're asked to go the distance. Unless we're Usain Bolt. Keep doing what your doing, brah.

A little under a year ago, I did some track training with my buddy Dan, who did some running in college. I remember him saying to me, "You're plenty strong, you just don't have the discipline to pace yourself."

You're plenty strong, you just don't have the discipline to pace yourself.

Although it's now mid-March, I've finally settled on my theme for this year: Discipline. Discipline is more valuable than any talent. It's something you work for rather than something you're given. It's also something you can apply to any of your preexisting talents. This is going to be one of the few things that's ever come slowly to me in the early goings. Discipline is a struggle for me from the moment I encounter it. My expectation is that it will help me discover a lot more about myself. I think it may help me discover where I'm truly gifted in life so that I can stop believing I'm mediocre at everything now that I've become an adult.

It's hard to go these lessons alone. In deciding to discipline myself this year, I've already contacted one of my best friends to help hold me accountable in some of my pursuits. He's going to help me stay accountable on when I go to bed and wake up, so that I don't exhaust myself and Netflix binge. He's going to help me stay on task in a couple of areas of life as well.

This is where you come in. This blog started as an opportunity to share about my missions work in Mexico. Then it became a little self obsessed. Then it became a place for me to share some of the harder things about life, in the hopes that my writing touches and wakes other people up. I like to throw some jokes and entertainment in there, too. As anyone who knows me can attest, I love to make myself and other people laugh. What this blog has never been is disciplined. I write when I want. Sometimes I literally have a dozen ideas backed up in my head. Sometimes I go through a desert of bloggie thoughts. Either way, I write when I feel like it.

Here's the thing: I think that writing might actually be one of the things for which I actually possess a true talent. One that I won't just dominate early on, like the Monstars in the first half against the Looney Toons. For once, I'd like to be Jordan stretching out for that game-winning dunk (Spoiler alert! Also, so many good things here. Bill Murray, for one. Why didn't Jordan ever do this when Karl Malone was mugging him in those series against the Utah Jazz? I digress). So, I've got a request for you. If you read this, dig it and think I should keep writing, drop me one comment. If one person drops one comment per post, that will motivate me and hold me accountable to make sure I get something up next week. The only requirement is that it can't be the same person over and over again. I know there are one or two of you out there (That's all, mind you.) So that's it. One comment from one unique reader per week, help me stay motivated to keep doing something I love. If we can keep this going for a bit and I can find room in my schedule, maybe we can up the stakes. More comments! More posts!

Even as I type this, part of me hopes you won't do me this favor so I can escape this very pedestrian level of discipline and commitment. The thing is, I know if you've made it through this novel of a post, you can probably handle typing a few words about what you think of it.

Please do it. Please help me. Save me from becoming a lifelong monstar.

Defiant Peace

A couple of months ago, I was doing my final sweep of my dad's house, making sure that I hadn't forgotten anything. A big move makes you forget the conveniences of email, Fedex and UPS (I don't think I need to speak on why I'm leaving USPS out of this list). In those moments, we feel a deep stress and need to identify and claim everything we need to take with us. My frenetic quest to claim all things Clint took me to the basket on the top of the refrigerator. In my family's home, the basket has two layers. On top are the prescriptions. For many years now, my little brother has consumed a potpourri of pills regulating his seizures and his behavior. If we had this basket at our old home, surely this is where my mother's sometimes potent cocktails of drugs designed to fight her leukemia would have resided. The second layer in this basket is comprised of various oddities and items we no longer think about or need. It was here that I found something that made me slow down and reduced the insignificance of being sure that I had gathered all of my things.

I very nearly dismissed it. The girly handwriting bordered on portraying the writer as juvenile at first glance, but as it came into better focus, it communicated more of an innocence. As I looked for another moment, it's contents engulfed me. It was a list of recommended natural supplements to aid in dealing with cancer and chemotherapy. The contrast between the handwriting and the contents was disquieting. It felt incredibly unjust that a young woman who possessed this handwriting also possessed such a deep knowledge of an insidious, destructive disease.

Allie Frymoyer was an intern with HOPE two summers ago. I remember the day standing in HOPE's kitchen, a common meeting place, discussing my mother's sickness. Right now, I can't recall the exact circumstances, I think I have willfully forced bits and pieces of my mother's physical degradation out of my heart and mind. We talked about how my mother was going through treatment. Allie asked pointed questions about my mother's process and condition. She spoke with the kind of care that only a deeply compassionate person who had experienced the same level of suffering could communicate. I remember her smiling sweetly during some of the difficult conversation. Her facial expressions showed the same sort of defiance toward the subject matter that her handwriting did in the note I found on my desk the next day, accompanied by her favorite vitamin fortified juice which helped her through her chemo. I was taken by her thoughtfulness and also by the fact that an unpaid college intern would find room in her budget to give a $6 bottle of juice away.

Another day, Allie and I were talking over lunch. The subject was engagement. I had recently bought a ring and was preparing to propose, she had just gotten engaged. I wanted as brief an engagement as possible, I was ready to be married. Conversely, Allie was looking toward a year long engagement. I really don't know much about the intricacies of Allie's life at the time, but I do know that she was still sick. She would miss days at HOPE from time to time and I think was even admitted to the hospital at one point during the summer. The idea that she would want to take her time and have a normal if not extended engagement was odd to me. Although her sickness loomed, she was in no rush to claim what was hers in this earthly life. Again, she had a peace about her that completely betrayed her circumstance.

Allie was at peace with her sickness. It was through her acceptance of it's physical existence that she was able to reject much of it's emotional and psychological impact. Allie remained fresh when she could have been jaded. She lived in and made the most of the moments she was given rather than rushing to or hoping for better ones. She cared for my mother, whom she never met. Allie's presence and actions communicated a deep, abiding peace.

I woke up this morning, rolled over and grabbed my phone to do the typical email/text check. Mixed in with a number of other messages, was a brief email informing HOPE staff of Allie's passing. Since my mother passed last year, I don't cry much. My theory is that my emotions just got overloaded and kind of stopped responding. When I read this message, I immediately felt the old but familiar sensation of warm tears running down my face. When I weep for people like my mother and Allie passing, I don't cry for them. I cry because it feels a travesty that this world should be denied the presence of people like Allie Frymoyer and Sandy Barnes.

Allie, thank you for pulling these tears out of me. Thank you for a smile and a handwritten note that stood in stark but quiet and humble defiance of the worst this world has to offer. Thank you for showing what Hope in God truly looks like. It's my prayer that in the wake of losing you, your defiant peace will resonate in our hearts and bring us to a similar place.

Does it Almost Feel Like You've Been Here Before?

It's the New Year once again. It seems the experience is always the same, granted with different circumstances. We look back and dub the last 365 days the best or the worst ever (and occasionally somewhere in between). Bloggers blog, hack writers who occasionally write make sure to write on this day (See: This post), we all promise the next 365 days will be better than the last. Sometimes we're right. I like to try to eschew the norm, but inevitably end up doing the same as everyone else. Last year, I decided on January 1 that I would commit myself to the gym and change the way my body looked and felt, but refused to call it a resolution. It may be the first resolution I've ever kept. I remember writing the 12/13 version of this post last year. I thought I was reviewing the roughest year I had ever had. I was right. However, what I didn't know was that 2012 would be quickly and definitively supplanted as the most challenging year I've had.

I was left to my own devices

Many days fell away with nothing to show

And the walls came tumbling down

In the city that we loved

Grey clouds roll over the hills

Bringing darkness from above

January began with me emotionally distraught. For one of the first times in my life, I was taking sick days as "mental health days." When I stay moving, it facilitates distraction and growth for me typically. I was thankful that by the middle of the month I was headed down to Haiti to spend time with friends and colleagues. At some point during my trip, I got word from my dad that my mother had been rushed out to Ohio State by some friends in the middle of the night. She had been coping with extreme abdominal pains and they had finally grown unbearable. At this point in time, it was pretty standard affair for my mother to head to Ohio State for unexpected treatment. This time felt simultaneously the same and very, very different. I pulled a good friend and colleague aside and we prayed together. I remember him asking if there was any reason to be particularly concerned this time around. My response is seared in my memory. I told him there was no evidence that we should be more concerned than usual, but it was simply the law of averages that dictated in my mind that each time she went, there was an increasing likelihood that she would not come home. Within days of my return home from Haiti, I headed out to Ohio State. The stated reason I stayed in Columbus with my mom was because I would rent a car and bring her home when her treatment was over. There was also a big part of me that was worried something terrible would happen and I didn't want my mother to be left alone when it did. 12 days after I arrived in Columbus, my mother passed away. The following days and weeks felt like I was living someone else's life. It's not really possible to understand that a loved one is gone in a brief period of time. We were scrambling to put together a service and get a handle on how we felt. We were surrounded by friends and family. My three best west coast friends flew out to see and support me. Soon after, I was filling up my life with adventure and stuff. I bought new suits, shoes, a jacket and tent and numerous other toys and made trips to Peru, Africa, Germany and a few spots in the US. I took a new position at HOPE. I still felt like myself. I was just a really sad version of me. I felt deeply disappointed and like my family and I were getting kicked around, but my constitution and convictions remained. This time wasn't the worst this year would have to offer.

Time went on. I felt very much on my own. Living at home served as a constant reminder of my new reality. One I didn't really care for. I felt I had spent the preceding 2-3 years building myself into the man I wanted to be and building my life into the one I wanted. I had based that man and life on my faith and constitution and yet they seemed to be crumbling away. I found myself living a different life than the one I wanted. One that I had lived before and fought to make different.

The year's gotten harder. As I get ready for a big, exciting move I've been prone to isolate myself from my loved ones. I was supposed to leave tomorrow, but in the past two weeks, my car has been in the shop twice, I've broken my phone, fallen off my motorcycle (at a very slow speed, Carla took the worst of it) and been very sick for about a week. 

I think part of the reason my non-resolution worked so well last year is because I only made one. It took priority over nearly everything. Whenever it was a question of the the gym vs. something, the gym always won out, unless the other something was a something of extreme importance. This year, my singular goal is to be a finisher. I've been the kind of guy who can get things started, get stoked and get others excited with me. But I'm a sprinter. I have a hard time sticking with things for the long haul. I hope to change that. I've got a lot to rebuild and some new projects on the horizon (I've been kicking around trying my hand at a novel!?) and my hope is that I won't quit till the job is done, no matter what it is.

Oh were do we begin?

The rubble or our sins?

Happy New Year.

17 Crazy Days

Sometimes it feels like you just can't catch a break, like nothing is going your way. Sometimes you wonder why that perfect thing at just the right time never happens to you. Sometimes your life just seems a little harder than everyone else's. But every now and then, you have 17 days like the 17 days I have just had. There have been highs and lows, but I just can't get over how many awesome things have happened. I had this great head of steam posting here and then over the last two and a half weeks, I lost it. That's because life has just been keeping me too busy being awesome.

 Friday, Oct. 11, 2013

Dad's Birthday. This day was definitely a hard one, but we did our best to make the best of it and we had a lot of fun. We discovered a new brewery that featured delicious pizza and over 100 beers on tap. Strombolis and wings covered in garlic and a couple of delicious beers. I even got dad a gift that got him totally stoked. That's what's up.

Saturday, Oct. 12, 2013

Dad's Birthday part 2. We had dinner with family and then headed to see Captain Phillips. Great food, great company, great movie, awesome time.

Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2013

I bought a motorcycle. Yeah, just like that. I showed up and they had knocked $1,300 of the posted price. Maybe there will come a day when I'll look back at how I got heisted on that stupid piece of junk bike that's been nothing but problems. As of now, killer deal, so exciting. She is beautiful and wonderful an sounds amazing.

Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2013

Buy a super sweet looking motorcycle helmet. Ride motorcycle for first time. I literally could not stop smiling the whole time. They should call motorcycles motor smile machines.

Thursday, Oct. 17, 2013

Ride motorcycle to work for first time. Why not? I've officially been on it a total of 45 minutes. I also took a motorcycle safety course where I rode a motorcycle around a parking lot for 10 hours. Driving 30 miles to work is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Learn by doing, right!? After work, head out to New Jersey to meet up with a new friend and new friend's family.

Thursday, Oct. 17 - Sunday Oct. 20

Hang out with friend and family in New Jersey.Friend's family is pretty darn cool. Hang out with friend and family in NYC. Hang out with the Flavins! Eat a chicken parmesan sandwich in a greasy, NJ diner. Go see the Phantom of the Opera with friend. I have been developing an informal east coast bucket list for before I move back to California. Check off visit NYC, see Broadway Show. Eat all the street food! Run out of gas on the side of a New Jersey highway at 230 am only to have police officer arrive within 30 minutes, give me all the assistance and get me on my way.

Wednesday, Oct. 23

24 hour camp out in Chick-fil-a parking lot with 7 friends for grand opening. When it was all done, we each earned about 37 coupons for free chick-fil-a sandwich combos. So much delicious chicken. Wednesday was also that day that I may have witnessed the saddest thing I have ever seen in my life. Perhaps I'll address that in another post.

Thursday, Oct. 24

I've owned a motorcycle for nine days. This seems like an appropriate amount of time to wait my first road trip. I head 150 miles down to my hometown in VA, the greatest state in the union. I hang out with one of my best friends and go to a karate class, because that sounds like a fun, interesting thing to do.

Friday, Oct. 25

Hang out with one of my best friends and one of the most critical mentors in my life. Head another 100 miles south to see one of my other best friends in the entire world. Enjoy Virginia in it's wonder and grandeur.

Saturday, Oct. 26

Head down to one of the most wondrous beautiful towns in all the world, Blacksburg, VA (This time not on a motorcycle). Eat delicious food, imbibe delicious victuals. Somehow accidentally buy 2nd row seat on the 50-yard line from a scalper. Watch football game from the best vantage point I likely will in my entire life with one of my best friends. How did this happen??? Refuse to discuss results of game. Drown sorrows in further victuals and best cheese fries this side of the Mississippi.

Sunday, Oct. 27

Spend afternoon riding full length of skyline drive on motorcycle. Take Virginia in further in all its grandeur. I'm from the best state in the union. Life is grand.

I just wanted to get this all out and share it and say how thankful I am that all these things have happened to me. I know it's not the most detailed post ever. So many of these things deserve more than just a brief shout. They're so incredible. Maybe I'll go over them again, maybe I'll post some pictures. Maybe not. Frankly, right now I'm just exhausted from so much awesome and I'm so grateful.

Motorcycle Diaries Volume 3: Why Chicks Are Like Compliments

You guys know the drill. A guy I would absolutely love to buy a beer and hang out and joke around with, Ryan Reynolds:


Also, if anyone knows how to get abs like that, I'll take your answer off the air.

This is the last post in my motorcycle diaries series. These posts have basically been about the things I was thinking about when learning to ride a motorcycle when I should have been thinking about learning to ride a motorcycle.

Chicks are Like Compliments

I have previously used this forum as a place where I've discussed my need for affirmation and appreciation. Historically, if my soul were an internal combustion engine, it's fuel would be praise. I think there is a little bit of this in all of us. Even those who are the most sure of themselves feel that lightness of heart and surge of pride when another person tells them they are worthy. It's a condition of humanity that somewhere deep inside us we were meant to be more than we are. When we get a brief feeling that we are better than we believe ourselves to be, it is nice to live in that feeling. I've been striving to be less connected to the praise I do or do not receive. We're all going to do great things and we're all going to screw up pretty badly at times. If we're confident and happy with who we are and who we're becoming, we can start to insulate ourselves from a deep need for praise and the destructive capacity of negative feedback. Regardless, it's nice to get thrown some compliments every now and then. To sum up, I don't need affirmation the way I once did, but I still like it a great deal.

Here's the thing: When I receive compliments, I don't know what to do with them or don't want them anymore. Maybe I'm less sure of myself and my trajectory than the above paragraph would indicate, because I never feel deserving of praise. When someone tells me I'm good at something, I generally believe they are either confused, wrong, or are just such a nice person that they would give me unjustified praise. I've even crafted a standard response to praise that reflects this thought process. "That's very kind of you to say" is a phrase that turns the compliment back on the complimenter and makes me sound like a good guy while completely avoiding acknowledgement of the idea that I may have done something well. Sometimes I even think less of the complimenter or the compliment itself, merely because it was given to me.

I am the exact same way with women as I am with compliments. Guys, let's be honest. Women are awesome. They smell nice. They have pretty hair. They are very attractive. If they really like us, sometimes they'll do things like make us sandwiches, scratch our backs and give us smooches. Much like compliments, when you get to have a lady around, you feel better about you. If you get a lady or a compliment, you feel like you must have done something well to earn them. They both make you feel warm and delicious inside. Ladies and compliments are the best kinds of things. They are totally dragonsauce. Finally, the last things that ladies and compliments have in common is that I have no idea what to do with them once I get them and sometimes I think they're less valuable once I have them.

I can remember a few points in my life when I worked to be with a woman and determined I didn't want her anymore once I was sure she wanted me back. This determination has occurred  both as a passing feeling from which I recovered and a more permanent one that led to the dissolution of the relationship.



I will openly admit that this is completely dysfunctional. I will also say that I think there are a lot more people out there just like me. I'll bet it's even happened to the ladies out there as well. The princess and the frog is a famous fairy tale where a princess falls in love with a frog and smooches him and he turns into a prince. How many of us have experienced the opposite‽ After a few months or even after that first smooch, our prince or princess charming becomes a frog and we just want to send them back to the swamp.

Why is this? I know that I, for one, want what I can't have. I'm the worst about this. It happens when I'm shopping for things all the time. I can hop on the Internet with a passing interest in considering purchasing an item. If I find out that item is sold out or extremely limited I want it to be mine immediately or sooner. If it's readily available, I lose interest. Additionally, I think we all have some pretty deep-seated insecurities and qualities about ourselves that we don't care for. Maybe my degree of self loathing is greater than the average person but I project my negative perceptions of myself onto any woman who is willing to accept me. In a stunningly twisted mix of self loathing and pretension, any woman who is willing to "settle" for me is clearly not good enough for me. I feel like I could write a whole post on this one subject. I wonder if there are any other people out there who consider the idea that someone would be interested in them a strike against that someone. Obvi, this is something I really need to work on.

So, I was shifting, accelerating, decelerating and swerving through cones on a big open parking lot, and I was doing it pretty well. I was looking for as much constructive criticism and guidance as possible. I only had about 10 hours on the bike and wanted to learn absolutely everything I could in that small window. Much to my chagrin, I was getting great feedback. There were a few instances when I pulled up to a rider coach and he said, "That was perfect. Change absolutely nothing." My mind started churning. I thought, "These coaches have no idea what they're doing, this is a waste of time. There's no way I'm doing as well as they say I am. They are either just kind or incompetent."

Then I decided  to get out of my head. I'd spent hundreds of hours on two wheels without a motor. I've been driving a stick for years. I know the basics of looking through turns, braking at appropriate times, shifting, etc. Not only was it possible I was actually good at this, but it was logical as well. My job wasn't to tear myself down or question my small successes. These would only make me a worse motorcyclist. What I needed to do was greet praise and acceptance and be grateful for it, knowing that there would be plenty of time for criticism an improvement as well. I was just at the start and I had the basics down, I needed to be confident in this with the humility of knowing that I still needed to grow massively in my skills and would make plenty more mistakes on the way. I felt a brief surge of pride, my chest puffed a little, I smiled and responded, "Thank you."

Motorcycle Diaries Volume 2: Learner

I received a request for my shirtless dude of the day to be Jason Statham. I'm obliging.


Reminder: Last weekend I took a motorcycle safety course. It was super fun and I learned some skills that will help me ride a motorcycle. I also learned and considered some things that had nothing to do with motorcycling. Those are the things I'm going to talk about here.

Learner

This was not the first time I took a motorcycle safety course. About twelve or thirteen years ago I took a very similar course in Virginia after a friend talked me into it. At that time I had been driving very briefly and really hadn't spent much time on two wheels of any sort, motorized or otherwise. I had never used a clutch on any vehicle of any kind. Despite this fact, I thought I was some kind of motorcycling wunderkind.

I would say the key word in that last sentence was "thought." In recent years, I've noticed that I can acquire a reputation for arrogance or over confidence. To the people that have that opinion, I would say I have come a long, long way. Clint circa 2000 was a specimen in arrogance. If I ever encountered something new, I would just assume I was already good at it because I was, you know, me. Well, that weekend the best rider on the range went down with his bike twice and was visibly shaken by the end. To this day, I am not sure why I passed. I have half a mind to believe that the instructor passed me out of sympathy. After that, all I had to do was go to the DMV to get my license endorsed, but I never did. There were certainly other reasons, I didn't have the resources to buy a bike at the time. But the heart of my decision was the fact that I rode a motorcycle terribly and was scared to get back on one. My friend got a bike after the course and I remember being jealous but knowing I just didn't trust myself with one.

Fast forward a decade and some change. I'm a grown man. I can handle adult decisions and adult responsibilities. I've been through some challenges and made some decisions that no one I know has quite had to go through or make. Despite these truths, I was worried seventeen or eighteen year old Clint was going to show up and ruin this whole thing for me. Then there was the alternative, what if my prior failure had nothing to do with my immaturity, but I just wasn't any good at riding a motorcycle?

It turned out that I took very well to riding. For the past 6 years, I've been driving a car with a manual transmission. Additionally, my cycling/mountain biking handling skills translated pretty well. It sort of sounds strange to cite these completely different skills as reasons for riding a motorcycle well, but I really felt like they helped. I felt that I had a huge advantage over the other students without the same prior experience. I can't imagine how hard it must be to simultaneously learn the concepts of riding, the physical components and how to work a clutch. As I realized how much my preexisting skillset benefited my motorcycling, I started to get confident, which was good. Then I started to get over confident, which was bad. Again, I was starting to find myself in a place where I was doing something I knew very little about and yet considering myself an expert on it.

Over the past few years, I've had a lot of cross-cultural training and interaction. Probably the lynch pin to successful cross-cultural interaction is entering every situation a learner. Taking the posture of a learner means a number of things. It means being as humble as possible. It means recognizing that everyone in the world could teach you something. I means knowing that no matter how much you know or think you know, you still have a lot to learn. Most obviously, it means if you're interacting with an expert, you do everything you can to ask, learn and mine for information and wisdom.

Fortunately, this training kicked in. It reminded me that even though I felt remarkably comfortable for a novice on a motorcycle, I was still just a novice putting around a parking lot at 25 mph or less. Not only that, I was surrounded by a number of people who knew much more about motorcycling than I did. As a result, I realized that although I was comfortable, I was not great at riding a motorcycle. I was barely even scratching the surface of learning how to ride. I took the posture of an learner. I observed as much as I could watching other people ride, and asked as many questions I could of our instructors. If I had been too sure of myself, I could have wasted valuable opportunities to learn. Instead I feel that I made the most of the time I had.

I'm really thankful for the training and experiences I've been given. Getting to travel the world and work with people different from me continues to benefit me even when I'm just taking a motorcycle safety course. I hope I continue to be afforded these chances, that I take them and make the  most of them.

Motorcycles Diaries Vol. 1: Investment

Alright, the last time I posted, I used a facebook link with a hunky shirtless movie star. Subsequently, I had possibly the busiest three hours in the history of my blog. It could not have been that my writing was that good. The readers have spoken. You want it, you got it. My favorite hunky movie star, shirtless

Yes, this is shameless, but I'll do anything to promote my art. Now, on to the actual post.

People who know me well know that I love metaphors, analogies and allegories. I love to talk, analyze and restate things. In short, I like to say the same thing a bunch of different ways and behave as if it's a new thought each time. I don't know how everyone tolerates this.

This weekend I participated in a motorcycle safety course and had an absolute blast. I wasn't sure how I would feel about being on a bike because it had been a long time, but it was really great. In keeping with the tendencies I mentioned above, I'm going to tell you a couple of things that the course made me think about and how the class was an allegory for other things in my life. Much overthinking and overanalysis will ensue.

Investment

The way this all went down was pretty crazy. I was looking into the course over the last few weeks and found out there was an opening for this past weekend. I had thought about signing up, but the registration closed. I found out with a little more research that I could walk into the course on Thursday night when it started and take the available spot as long as no one else came in before me. I just needed to get my motorcycle permit before that. So, Thursday morning I studied up for the DMV permit test for a little bit, went in, passed, and got my permit. A couple hours later, I showed up an hour early for the course and snagged the remaining spot. Thursday morning I had no prospects of riding a motorcycle. By Thursday evening, I had a permit and was fully enrolled in a  free Pennsylvania course that would afford me the opportunity to ride Saturday and Sunday. If all went well, I'd have my license by Sunday afternoon. Insane.

As all the other students arrived, we started talking. They had been receiving emails about this course for months. If we didn't pass, we may not have another chance util the spring. If we were late for any of the classes, we would fail. These students had clearly put forth some effort and been thinking about this course for a long time. Some had to take it to keep their licenses. Some had already purchased bikes and needed to pass to be official. I had paid $10 for my permit and invested a couple hours of my time that day and shown up spur of the moment. My emotional, intellectual and financial investment toward this moment had been extremely low. I really wanted my license, but if I didn't pass it was not a big deal to me and all I had lost was part of  a weekend (Which is hard to consider a loss when it's spent riding a motorcycle).

I've been working in economic development for about a year and a half now. I've read books like When Helping Hurts and Toxic Charity (Please, please, please, if you're interested in learning about dependency and aid done right, read Toxic Charity). I've repeatedly been taught about how things go wrong when people don't have any investment. I've read countless stories of wells and similar resources built for villages in the developing world. Wells and resources that the local people had zero investment and interest in and would inevitably fall into disrepair.

In my own way, I had a brief brush with a resource I had no investment in, and I saw it a little bit in my behavior. I definitely wanted my license. However, I was always the last one to class once I got in. I finished the written test minutes ahead of everyone, as I didn't really feel much pressure to pass. When we got on the bikes, I felt free to explore the range in some ways and try different tactics. As the weekend went on, I got more stoked on the idea of having a bike and got motivated to put my absolute best effort forward, but I had to think, what if I wasn't sold on this whole bike thing? What if I had this great opportunity at my fingertips but no deep motivation to take advantage of it? From the word "go," the people who had deep motivation to be in the class were working harder than me.

Working to help the poor, I don't think this lesson can ever be taught to us too many times. It's critical that the people you are working to help are also working to help themselves. No matter how many times I read or see this fact in action, each time I experience it is valuable. I think I've seen it so many times from the perspective of the helper, that I haven't considered it much from the perspective of the one being helped. It also makes me wonder how many things in life I've been handed that I've taken for granted without even realizing it. It's easy to look at a rusting, broken well and wonder why people aren't taking better care of it, but do we ever consider the same with our friendships and family members? I need to think deeply about the advantages/love/care I've been given and whether I have fully honored those gifts with my actions. If we keep thoughts like these at the forefront of our minds, I believe we'll take better care of our relationships and resources and relate better to our less fortunate brothers and sisters.