that thing you do

Eleanor Roosevelt must have been a heck of a woman. At any rate, she was an excellent source of inspirational aphorisms. To wit: "You gain strength, experience and confidence by every experience where you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you cannot do."

It's true: I really must. That's the best (though by far not the only) lesson I learned in Germany: if you can't do it, that's the best reason to try.

Until Germany, I lived my life with the flexibility to make entirely asset-based choices. I excelled in school, so I challenged myself with more school. I had after-school jobs i could do with my eyes closed. I sucked at hand-to-eye coordination, so I just stuck with the sports that went in a straight line. And then I went to Germany and found out that my greatest asset-- linguistic ability-- was essentially useless at first. And so I learned how to fail, sometimes stunningly.

And oh my gosh but was it fun! Somehow, until then I had lived the very sheltered existence of only doing what I could already do pretty well. And friends, that's not living. Living is dirty and gritty and hard and oh so satisfying. You fail more than you succeed, and success is the sweeter for it.

Aikido is my newest Everest. It's not like anything I've done before. It's intense and kinetic and draws upon none of the intelligences that I possess inherently. I have to earn every little success. It's amazing.

I'm not a thrill-seeker in the traditional sense. I'm not interested in bungee-jumping or skiing black diamonds or extreme anything. But I'm totally hooked on the adrenaline rush of doing the thing I cannot do.