In That Place

January 25th, 2011

The place that has no name, really. Transition doesn’t really do it justice. I’m past that. Where I am is new – like my skin.

I burned my right wrist recently while cooking. It hurt right at the moment. An eye opening ouch!

My skin bubbled up in reaction – puffy and pissed off. It took a week but slowly it started to scab over.

After a few more weeks, the scab started to peel away revealing a tender, soft new white underneath. A white that turned to pink as the remaining scab at my wrist began to catch on the sleeves of sweaters causing pain, reminding me I was still healing.

Then the scab completely fell off and my new skin, too soon really for prime-time was exposed to all the world and its unpredictable elements. For the first time since the initial burn, it really hurt. I hurt.

I understand this process because I am living it. I am developing a new skin and shedding my old one. Only sometimes this new skin feels so much more painful. It hasn’t toughened yet.

And only time will tell if I’ll have a scar from the process or this new skin will look virtually indistinguishable from the old. The only memory of it in my mind – in my experiences.

I suppose I should have rubbed some sort of lotion on it – some salve to prevent scarring. I, like always, am just trying to tough it out.

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Belayed Development

January 25th, 2011

Course: Beginning rock climbing

Institution: Planet Granite

Location: San Francisco

It had been on my To Do list ever since I saw Planet Granite convert one of the old Presidio buildings down at the end of Chrisy Field into an indoor rock climbing gym: learn to climb.

I decided to take their 4 week beginning climbing course. The first night we learned how to belay. Belaying is when you assist the climber by holding the rope and preventing the climber from hitting the ground in the event of a fall. There is a specific technique to belaying. You have to know how to wear a harness, how to use a belay device (at Planet Granite it’s called a gree), how to manage the rope moving through the device and how to brake the rope with your body.

In a climbing gym the rope is attached to the top of the climbing wall for safety and as such is called top-roping. The climber, meanwhile, ties into the rope directly using two knots – the figure 8 and the fisherman’s knot. Both the belay partner and the climbing partner use some basic lingo to communicate when climbing is okay to begin and when a climber has reached the summit and wants to be helped down.

It sounds a lot more complicated than it is. We learned how to belay and tie in as a climber in two hours. Our teacher asked that we take our belay tests before the next class. To climb in most indoor climbing gyms you have to take a test where gym management will watch you tie in as a climber and practice belaying to make sure you understand the techniques and are not a safety hazard.

So, ever the eager student, I drove over to the gym on the Friday before my next class and asked to take the test. I knew all the answers to the questions the manager asked and gave him quick answers. I did, in his own words, “everything technically correct.” But he didn’t pass me.

He said, “You looked hesitant.”

“What?” I said, truly dumbfounded. “But you said I did everything correctly.”

“It should look like second nature,” he replied.

My head spun. I realized arguing with him was futile but at the same time I was screaming in my head, “how the heck is it supposed to be second nature when I just learned a few days ago?”

He knew I was in the beginning climbing class and he knew that our teacher had requested we take the test before the next class. So I was thoroughly confused as to what he expected of me. I stepped out of my harness and left.

By the time I got to my car I was fuming and as soon as I shut my door, I was crying. I had failed. I had been prepared, I had done everything technically right and I had still failed. I felt like a loser. I mean who doesn’t pass their belay test?

It didn’t help to find out the following week that everyone else in my class had passed. I had practiced with them and couldn’t figure it out. They had no more skill than I did and they certainly didn’t belay with the ease of second nature. The teacher said she’d wait to start class to give me a chance to take the test again. So I stepped up, confident that I knew what I was doing, but the L word clanged in my head. I failed again.

I was so embarrassed I started to sweat. The class went on like nothing had happened – like my ego wasn’t lying on the floor like a used up chalk bag.

I couldn’t concentrate on what the teacher was saying. All I could think was why? Why did it bother me so much to fail?

The reality is that there are no guarantees. You can work hard, do everything right and still come up short. And I think that’s what was truly bothering me. I couldn’t help but relate my experience in a rock climbing gym to the rock I had being pushing up a mountain lately – my sense of self. My self-worth has been so tied up in accomplishment that without it, I felt like a stranded climber with a dangling rope.

That weekend I joined my family to select a tree for Christmas and related my woes about the belay test. While trying to strap the tree to the top of the car I became tangled in the rope. My sister laughed and said, “Maybe this is why you failed your belay test.”

I couldn’t help but laugh, too. It was a beautiful day outside, I was surrounded by family and all was well. She was right. I was getting tangled up in the outcome.

Still I was determined. I went into the gym later that weekend and asked again to take the belay test. While waiting to take it I told myself, “I will continue to take this test until I get it right. I will take it as many times as it takes. They’ll post a picture of me on the wall because I come back so often to take it.” And then I laughed at the thought of a framed picture of myself in full harness greeting gym members when they entered. Sure enough, I passed.

But the real test was this – learning to fail. Most things don’t work out if you’re doing them to reach a result. It is at the end of the day, like the struggle of Sisyphus, the effort that makes the person.

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What Chinese and American Moms Can Learn From a Dog

January 24th, 2011

It all started with an excerpt of Amy Chua’s new book, Tiger Mother, in the WSJ. The excerpt was given of course a controversial title to ensure plenty of pick up – “Why Chinese Mothers are Superior” (BTW, it was confirmed that the title was not hers but that of her editor). The article ignited a heated debate. A quick scroll through of comments on the article at WSJ revealed that most readers hated what she had to say.

I, however, applaud Amy Chua’s piece. Not because I agree with her parenting style, but because she had the guts to give voice to her story – when so few women do – especially when it might result in all sorts of opposition. I can’t help it – I like the bold.

While some of her tactics seemed to me abusive, one thing that was clear is she loves her children. And yes, that love and want to do what’s right can manifest itself in all sorts of screwed up ways. Still, I believe she made some good points that are worth discussing – such as, how often treating something with kid gloves assumes fragility.

That being said, the Chinese parenting emphasis on drills and route learning seems to be a pendulum swung perhaps too far in the other direction. She’s simply playing on the other extreme.

An excellent essay with another traffic generating title, “Amy Chua is a Wimp” ran in the New York Times and hits a more nuanced center. In it, David Brooks argues, that the most intellectually challenging learning can only be had in complex social situations – situations that Ms. Chua’s parenting actually keeps her children from. I thought Mr. Brooks hit a point that probably even many American moms fail to understand – just how important a role EQ plays.

But really, I think the whole matter could be settled by one industrious dog, Chaser. His owner, John W. Pilley, a psychologist, has taught the dog through rigorous daily teaching sessions of 3 to 4 hours over 1,000 nouns. He even went so far as to teach Chaser grammar. Which all goes to prove the point that even a dog can learn through extensive drills or is it that a dog is capable of learning nouns and grammar? One way of looking at it is that extensive practice and effort are easy or extensive practice and effort can produce great results.

Either way, I think the most important point was made at the end of the article on Chaser, when another doctor mentioned it wasn’t the dog that was exceptional, but the attention lavished on her.

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