my gray matter

s.l.c.

it’s tuesday morning and i can barely move my right arm. before you feel too sorry for me let me explain why. i spent the last four days snowboarding in utah. i bet you don’t feel so bad for me anymore. it’s true, my wounds are self-inflicted, but so worthwhile. christina and i hopped on a plane with our good friends chris and natalie and headed out to salt lake city: a nice city known for a great view, the olympics, and polygamy. just kidding. no offense to any mormons reading this page. actually, are mormons allowed to use the internet. just kidding again.

the day before we arrived they got about ten inches of snow, which made for great boarding on friday and saturday. but sunday was the day when god himself visited the top of the mountain. throughout the day we got about a foot and a half of snow which made for the best boarding i’ve ever experienced.

the boarding was fantastic, but my favorite part of the long weekend away was watching christina overcome fear. don’t get me wrong, i had as much fear as she did about falling, hurting myself, catching an edge, the chairlift breaking, etc. it wasn’t about how much fear we each had, but rather, how willing we each were to try to overcome it. we had some fantastic conversations about why and what we fear, how to acknowledge fear but still try new things, distinguishing which fears are legitimate, and ultimately how to overcome fear for the sake of experiencing life to its fullest. needless to say, we didn’t answer all of these complex thoughts, but we had a great time talking about it and gained some important insights into each of our personalities.

it has caused me to wonder; how many opportunities and experiences am i missing out on because of fear? i’m quickly realizing that the first step is to separate recklessness from fears worth overcoming. i’m certainly not advocating reckless endangerment. i also think that recklessness isn’t limited to physical harm. some people walk through life consistently being emotionally reckless, which causes great harm to themselves and others. but once i’ve become aware of avoiding recklessness, i again come back to the question of what i might be missing out on. what relationship have i limited because i’m afraid to tell someone how much his or her friendship really means to me? what experiences have i missed out on because i feared failure and preferred the comfort of what is already known? i could list about fifty more questions, but don’t want to take up the space.

i don’t have a great answer for how to balance experiencing life with the reality of fear. unfortunately, even in the beautiful mountains of utah the answer didn’t come to us. i’m sure someone’s written a book that gives the “answer”, or a formula to apply. or maybe i’ll just keep asking myself the question and that will be enough to help me get the balance right.

by the way… if you’re ever in salt lake, there’s an amazing little pizza place just east of the city called “the pie pizzeria”. i highly recommend it.

a friend in post war germany

i recently spent a week in germany. what a beautiful country. i wish i could say that i was there for pleasure, but it was mostly work. i spent the entire week in the city of stuttgart, in the southwest region of germany. it’s a very old city with a complex, hilly street system. if i ignored the architecture and the consistent snowfall, it felt as if i was traveling around san francisco. because the city is known in germany to be very confusing to navigate, a kind man named norbert transported me around. norbert was in his early thirties, a few years older than me. we actually looked and dressed rather similarly. we each had our north face coats, jeans, and comfortable shoes. thankfully, norbert’s english was far better than my german, or our travels would have been very quiet.

norbert is an anesthesiologist in a city a few hours away from stuttgart. he’s married with two young children. he was volunteering to drive me around for the conference i was there to help produce. he told me about his life, his work, and the town he lives in. he also told me about the history of stuttgart, and that most of the city had been destroyed in the war. as he was describing the rebuilding process, it hit me. sixty years ago norbert and i would not have been learning about each other. we wouldn’t have talked about our wives, the music we like, or how tired we are of snow at this point in the year. we would have been trying to kill each other. we would have been enemies in a war spanning the globe. this thought was very unsettling to me. mostly because i was enjoying my daily rides with norbert and learning about his life. how could i fathom taking a life as valuable as his?

the more i thought about it, i realized that if it were sixty years previous, and norbert and i were on opposite sides, we wouldn’t really be fighting each other. at least not for the sake of killing. i wouldn’t be fighting so that his family would never see him again. we would be fighting over the conflicting ideals of our countries, or at least of the current leaders of our countries. i would be fighting to stop the horrendous acts of an evil dictator named adolf hitler. and like most germans at the time, norbert would be fighting out of fear for that dictator rather than belief in the same values.

i would be engaged in a battle between myself and death. and in war, the avoidance of death necessitates killing. it’s rather crass, and i don’t mean to be overtly simplistic. and, i’m also sure that there are people who would simply enjoy the killing part. but if it were me, the fear of death would be my only motivation. another person’s life is less important to me than living to get home to be with my family and friends. even as i’m writing this it sounds so selfish. but it’s honest.

maybe someday i’ll be riding through the streets of mosul listening to the life story of a kind iraqi gentlemen who doesn’t seem that different from me. maybe we’ll talk about our families and how silly it seems that once we were enemies. i wonder who we’ll be at war with then?

where did jon go?

i want to apologize for my absence recently. there is no good excuse for my delinquency. there are however lots of bad excuses and some really good ones that aren’t true. it probably won’t happen again, unless it does.
i have thoughts to share and will be posting more frequently again. thanks for your patience and for continuing to read the site.

jon