The Death Slide

"What a stupid way this is to die."

I thought to myself as I squatted at the edge of a ledge in the middle of a jungle, strapped in a harness, tied to one single wire via a pulley---my life dependent on a couple of stoner dudes and a handful of carabiners.

"For real. If I die, this is my own stupid fault. I agreed to this. I said yes."

(Sometimes living what you preach ain't easy.)

I was zip-lining. I did not want to be zip-lining. I had no intention of zip-lining. Ever. (Zipping is also referred to as a "deathslide" ---for a reason!)

But my best friend treated me to this experience along with her whole family on the vacation to Hawaii I was co-opting and there was no turning back now (unless I wanted to waste all the money and look like a scaredy-cat.)

I adjusted my helmet ---like this pathetic little thing is gonna make a speck of difference as I plummet to my death.

"As a grown woman, I should be able to do this! The kids aren't afraid. Why am I?" I said to myself still squatting, a gajillion miles above land. Safe, safe, beautiful land. How I missed it so!

I had a choice: I say yes and I jump. Literally. And possibly die. Possibly, seriously. literally die. Because at this height, there are very few other ways this turns out.

Or I don't. I let fear make my decision.

I have always considered myself a jumper. I take chances. I'm a risk-taker. I tell a great story about jumping off a train in my youth. I JUMP! 

But I'm older now, less reckless. I consider all the options more than I used to. I also have apparently developed a sincere fear of heights in my old age. All these things matter. A fear of heights matters!

The stoner, surfer dude asks if I am ready. I ask him to triple check all my connections and wires and other zipping apparati. He obliges me, again, smiling. I am not the first afraid to jump, nor will I be the last.

We are all afraid at one time or another. Afraid to move, afraid of a new relationship, afraid to make a change, afraid to take a chance. We have the option of fear all around us. In fact, we are encouraged towards it. Watch the news sometime---

Stormageddon coming! Deadly virus coming! Immigrants coming! Be afraid!

Fear is easy. Fear sells. Fear of people who are different from us, fear of different religion, different culture, different race. Fear of the other. Fear of ourselves. Like I said, fear is easy. It's jumping that's hard. Seeing and jumping...and trusting.

So I jumped.

As I was flying across the abyss, jungle volcano lands far below me, I loosened my grip on the wires just a bit to look around and enjoy the scenery from this vantage point. I tried to breathe.

"Look down at the lake!" Stoner, surfer, new-best-friend dude yelled at me from his own parallel high wire.

I looked and smiled. Beautiful.

Open your eyes

I am as shocked as many are with the choice UK citizens made today to leave the EU. Most of my British friends are equally shocked and dismayed.

"How could this happen??" We all ask.

After listening to hours of NPR and reading more Facebook suggested articles than I should have, it seems to me: no one thought it would happen. The issue wasn't taken as seriously as perhaps it should have been and that reminds me of something a bit closer to home.

We never took Trump seriously and look where he is. He has a 50% chance of being president of the United States after promising to build walls and close borders. He is running on fear and hate.

I'm not one for political posts on my blog. I have a wide audience and am not sure this is the platform for politics, but I can't be silent. Silence only creates more harm, more fear.

The Brexit vote, it seems to me in my research, was in large part, against immigrants and refugees, and is based in racism and xenophobia. It was in large part a closing of doors and a building of walls. It was a retreat from progress, community and the greater world. It was nationalistic and isolationist in tone and it is exactly what is happening in the U.S.

And as we know history repeats itself. The world paid very little attention to Hitler as well, and look what happened. Now we are a long way from there, but we are taking the early first steps. We must remember we ARE the other. It is us. The lines and differences are made up, created. We all (unless we are Native American) come from somewhere else. And yet here we are---excluding and fearing others because they look or sound or pray or love differently.

We need to open our closed hearts and closed borders.

Open your eyes. Pay attention. Fight the small-minded darkness with large-hearted light.

At least this is what I think. Would love to hear from you.

Muslim in America

I have been thinking a lot about little Ahmed from Texas. A 14 year old boy feeling the effects of a country and state and school filled with fear and bigotry. He just wanted to show an incredibly cool clock he built and instead he gets humiliated, cuffed and arrested because, let's be honest, he was Muslim. A young Muslim boy---the recipient of all the hate and religious intolerance this country is experiencing, dimming our alleged beacon of light. The worst part is by arresting him like that and parading him cuffed in front of his schoolmates, they were only perpetuating the fear, the narrative that: "Islam is bad! Ahmed is bad! Be afraid of him and others like him! Clearly, he's a terrorist! All Muslims are terrorists!!"

But then something happened. (Did his school Irving MacArthur High School in Texas apologize? No. Actually the opposite, although an apology would have been the proper response and could have created a learning moment.) But people stepped up. It's like what I was talking about in a previous blog about the refugee crisis. In this case it was a really important person: the President of the United States. Holy cow, you guys. President Obama tweeted this:

How amazing. I was so proud of our president for stepping into this and tweeting a HUGE show of respect and support for Ahmed. if only all of our leaders would step up in ways like this and be role models instead of "must-get-re-elected-fear-mongering-crazy-people". What a game changer that must have been for Ahmed. Follow that by hundreds of thousands of tweets supporting him: #istandwithahmed and special invitations from Facebook, Twitter and MIT. What a day!

And now, maybe just maybe, a little sting of this day is off for Ahmed. Maybe, just maybe he realizes he is okay, smart and yes, even valued in this society even if he has brown skin and a Muslim faith. Maybe, just maybe, he will accept that he is not a criminal or a terrorist as he said he felt and has been called---but just a kid, like every other kid in his school, a good kid in a crazy world. Maybe now he knows that although many of us are fearful and bigoted, not all of us are. It takes just one to step up, to change the tides, to take that heartbreaking look of fear off his face. It could be any of us in a different situation.

We have opportunities every day to be more of who we say we are, who we want to be, who we claim to be as a people. We are a nation of immigrants who seem to have forgotten that fact. We are a nation founded on religious freedom, yet seem to now think that only applies to Christianity. We claim the "land of the free and home of the brave" but have become the "land of the intolerant and home of the fearful."

Shame on the teachers and administrators at Irving MacArthur and the local police. Shame on them for perpetuating hate and stereotypes, for teaching their students fear and bigotry, for reacting from their lowest selves. Shame on them for perpetuating the Muslim-as-terrorist narrative, as Bitter Gertrude blogged. And shame on the current political voices encouraging, even embracing that fear, bigotry and yes, the narrative. Shame on them. We have a responsibility to not let these voices go unchecked, to not let bigotry and xenophobia reign, to see that acceptance, goodness and generosity become the loudest voices in the room.

But thankfully good is coming out of this. I can only hope more will, that our true colors will fight to shine through. And I hope Ahmed's life brightens in ways he can't imagine because of this shameful event. Maybe ours too.

#istandwithahmedandmuslims #weareallthesame #manufacturedfeardamages #nicejobpotus #hashtagheaven #I'vebeenbloggingalot #you'reabeacon

I wonder...

I wonder if this essay will be interesting.

Ha!

We (or at least I) spend so much time hoping. I hope I get this job, I hope I fall in love. I hope I have money. Hope hope hope! We hope our kids do well. We hope we don't get fired. We hope we win the lottery! Hoping is hard. And disappointing. There's always room for disappointment in hoping. So lately, I've taken to using new language. And it's wonderful.

I recently read Susan Jeffers' Embracing Uncertainty. And I gotta say although second half is kind of a snooze, first half is a game changer! There are a couple of her exercises I use regularly and love! One of them is the idea of wondering. She says by changing this one word "fear of the uncertain is replaced by curiosity." I like curiosity. Curiosity is fun! It may have killed the cat, but I think that's a lot of hype.

So nowadays, I always try to wonder instead of hope. I wonder what will happen. I wonder if they will call. I wonder if I will be a success. And I gotta tell ya: It's a wonder! Life is better while wondering. It's full of possibility. It may be a simple language shift, but it actually can lead to a larger transformation if you're open to it. For realz.

Wondering takes us out of fear-based worry, takes us out of the crowd, takes us out of the what-if mentality. Wonder is child-like, open and yes even hopeful, but it is not hoping. It's the step before or maybe the step after -- I don't know. But it feels different. Better. Breezier. Easy, breezy, beautiful Cover Girl. And the best part? There is no disappointment in wondering because there is no expectation. I mean, after all, we're just wondering.

Try it. It works.

(I wonder if you will...)

Overnight Train to Prague or The Manifestation of "Jump"

I awaken to my friend Dena hitting me on the arm and yelling.

“Wake up, Kim! Wake up! We’re here! We must have overslept! Hurry!” We are apparently already in Prague. I barely remember falling asleep last night. I was so tired, but afraid to sleep. It’s our first morning out of the U.S. and we are on an overnight train to Prague, Czech. (although at the time there was a "slovakia" at the end, but I digress.)

“Kim! C’mon! The train is stopping! Get your stuff.”

I’m still half asleep. I’m wearing jammies. (Don’t ask. It seemed like a good idea last night.) My backpack is unzipped, I unpacked half of it last night when we settled in. (Again, don’t ask. First time on a train.) I stand up, throw on my boots, grab my bra and try to fit thru the door with my over-packed pack. Dena is in the hall.

“Come on, Kim!” She pulls me through the small compartment door.

We are now standing in front of a closed train door. Crap. I’m still half asleep. My pack is unzipped, my boots are unlaced and I’m wearing my shorty jammies and holding my bra.

“I’m gonna open it” Dena says as she manhandles the door open. The train lurches. Under her force, the door opens. A miracle! Then the train starts to move.

“I’m gonna jump!” Now I’m starting to wake up. My pack is unzipped, my boots are unlaced. I’m wearing shorty jammies and holding my bra and the only person I know on this continent is about to jump off a moving train. Aaaand she does. Well, now I’m awake.

And alone! I move to her vacated spot in the doorway. The train is, of course, moving faster. I see Dena, laying on the platform, looking up at me, getting smaller and smaller in the distance. And almost in seemingly slow motion, she shouts: “JUMP, Kim!!!”

Jump, Kim…This feels like a moment. Could I do it? Was I a jumper?

We all have these moments in our life (maybe just not on the edge of a train car) -- moments that define us, that make us who we are, that seperate the jumpers from the non-jumpers.

Sometimes jumping means just standing up for yourself or speaking your truth to someone or even jumping into a new job or a new relationship because you just felt you had to. Maybe it means jumping in and doing the right thing, protecting someone. But it always involves bravery and going somewhere you’re not entirely sure you are capable of going. We all have these moments when the universe calls on us to make a choice: jump or don’t jump. Which action do you usually take?

Turns out, I am a jumper. Yup, I jumped. Bloodied, battered and bruised, but successfully reunited with Dena! We look across the platform at each other, laying limbs askew, smiling. Ah, success!

(And sure, then there was something, I guess-- if you must know--about the train stopping and then the train reversing and then hundreds of heads popping out the windows to watch as the conductor came out of the train, standing on the platform, shaking his head and wagging his finger at us to tell us in his best broken English that we had jumped off at the employee station and that Prague was still 10 km down the tracks where apparently the doors open on their own, and they wait for you to walk off the train, creating no need to jump off...but whatever. I jumped.)

3 actions for a more playful, authentic, improvised life TODAY!

1. say yes

Improv is all about saying YES. Yes creates action, moves things forward and makes things happen. Try saying YES today to yourself, to others, to situations...anything! It make take bravery and slight adjustments to your thinking patterns, but it can change the way you live your life.

2. take a risk

Everyone is scared. Jump anyway. Do something you're afraid of. Say something you fear. Go somewhere you never thought you would. Live boldly. Take action. Take a risk. Even a small one right now, can prime you for more important risks later. So go ahead: jump!

3. make someone else look good/create joy

This is crucial to good improv work -- making other people succeed and look good! When you shift your focus from YOU to THEM -- something happens: you end up looking better! Your ego, worries, fear, psychosis all disappear and you actually succeed more. So surprise someone, put them first, create joy in their day and see how it changes yours!


This is a start to bringing more improv into your life! Let me know your thoughts and experiences with these 3 tricks. Post comments or questions below