RIDING THROUGH THE GAP

“Listen, here's what I think. I think that we can't go around... measuring our goodness by what we don't do. By what we deny ourselves, what we resist, and who we exclude. I think... we've got to measure goodness by what we embrace, what we create... and who we include.”

We are all taught to measure success by the mistakes we didn’t make, the thing we deprived ourselves of, and when we slip up we are filled with guilt and anxiety that we didn’t do what we were supposed to do.  When I was younger, I taught mountain biking at a summer camp and one of the skills we taught was how to avoid obstacles like rocks and tree roots.   We would set up two logs next to each other with a space just a bit more than the width of a tire between them and ask the campers to ride through the space.  The campers that focused on avoiding the logs, invariably ran right into them but the campers that focused on riding through the gap, always avoided the logs.  The key to success was focusing on what to do, rather than focusing on what to avoid.The quote above is one of my favourite quotes, from one of my favourite movies (Chocolat).  I have always been inspired by quotations, words have a certain power in my life to challenge me, inspire me, move me, and shape me.  This quote speaks to me on all those levels.  Too often in life I catch myself stressing all the things I didn’t do in a day...... I pat myself on the back because I didn’t waste time on Facebook, or I didn’t watch TV… rather than being excited by all the things I did do… I took a bike ride with Jenn, I laughed with friends, I captured a beautiful moment between two people.When I die, I don’t want my tombstone to read, “Dave Stark – a nice guy that lived a good life because he denied himself and avoided bad things”, I'd much rather it read, “A man who lived a good story, a man who took risks, lived adventurously, created boldly, and loved fully & embraced life, all of it”.  If I spend my life worrying about not wasting time and not making mistakes, like the campers I taught biking to, I will undoubtedly waste time and make mistakes.  It’s time to focus on the gap, to focus on taking risks, living adventurously, loving fully. This is more a note to myself than anything.At the end of the day, let’s measure our success by what we did, what challenge we embraced, what thing we created, what person we included, and stop focusing so much on all the 'not supposed to’s'. - dave