Why write about it?

There are 2 reasons I think it’s important to write about paragliding.

1. It’s practical – You have to keep a flight log.

I keep a trading log. Without it it’s impossible to retain the countless lessons that I learn from day to day in the market. These are punishing lessons. Not many people show up to work and risk losing everything they own because they punched the clock.

Trading for a living is dangerous work and it must be done deliberately. The lessons are painful and should not be repeated. There is guidance available, but little that suits your particular situation. There are too many variables, too many techniques. After all, differing opinions are what make the markets themselves.



The same goes for paragliding, however, unlike with stock trading someone had the wisdom to require that everyone who becomes a pilot should keep a flight log. Odd how you can flush your life’s savings down the toilet with no training at all but you can’t kite a paraglider without taking notes.

Which profession would not benefit from keeping a log? What would happen if you collected your lessons, wisdom or just kept track of what you were feeling and experiencing during the high and low points of your career? Instead of repeating critical mistakes you would change, without anyone’s help – even without reviewing your notes. There is something about the deliberate process of writing that refines your point of view about a situation, personal or professional.

2. For spiritual growth: How often during your day do you focus on happiness?

The media does not focus on beauty and joy. Friends and family are too embarrassed to express the fulfillment of their deepest desires when they occur, as rarely as they do. When one sells a company gets a raise or has a huge financial windfall they don’t talk about it. They can’t share the dollar amount or talk about what anything costs once they start spending. We just don’t do that. We don’t share our intimate experiences. It’s not considered manly. When we do share we try to frame it in such a way that it tells a fairy tale story: we remove ourselves from the action, depersonalize it.

On a social level we’re trapped in the riptide of our consumer culture. We don’t recognize how few thoughts are truly our own. We borrow metaphors from the media, some TV show, something we read or something we heard once that we thought was smart or cool. Individuality itself is a marketing device and if you want to rebel you’d better be using the right brand or no one will recognize your rebellion.

Most of us are acting out the desires we established as teenagers. It’s like we put on a little yellow raincoat when we were 2, 3 or 4 and haven’t taken it off as we’re turning 20, 30 and 40. We would sound like fools if we paid attention. Instead we’re too preoccupied with hiding the fact that we’re wearing that coat that’s busting at the seams – that someone might notice.

Consumer culture discourages spontaneity in favor of acting impulsively. There’s a huge difference. The impulse action is a reflex, an involuntary reaction as a result of conditioning; mostly the monotonous drum beat of consumer culture to have more, more than you need to be happy. Living spontaneously means living in the moment: seeing what is truly in front of you, acting from your heart. It means acting from your center, acting from the small voice that consumer culture branded the “angel on your shoulder”. If you listen to that small voice you can adopt a gentler attitude, because you have all the time in the world. The devil’s voice is much sharper and louder.

Consumer culture requires a commitment to the belief that you are running out of time: you’ve got to do this or have that before you get too old. Worse: you’re old now so you can’t do this or that. When you face the reality of these beliefs you have to laugh.

You spend your youth aching to be grown up, your old age dying to be young. When we’re at work we wish we were playing, when we’re playing we’re worried about work. Who wrote this script? Not you, that’s for sure: it sucks!

Paragliding demands that you live in the moment, that you relax, that you adopt a gentle attitude. It’s speed training for reconnecting with your true nature.

To me, the very purpose of life is learning and growth. As we go through the unending cycles of life we must change – we must transform the circle into a spiral so that when we encounter the same situation again we are different, we do better.

I made my walk up from the beach yesterday a walking meditation. It started by just breathing as I climbed. It’s a steep hill. It takes some strength and balance with the pack on your back. As I focused more on my breath my worries subsided. I didn’t think so much about the bad trade or the money I needed. I felt myself in my body. I saw the light reflecting off hill for what it was, magnificent, pure energy. That’s when the thought occurred to me. Underneath all of our worries, issues, fears there is a source of peace and joy that will, if you will let it, overpower any pleasure or pain the world can offer. We have a habit of taking what’s close to us and we giving it meaning. But what’s real isn’t always close – you have to dig deep.

I need to make money of course, and provide for my family. I need to pay my taxes and come to a full stop at the stop sign, of course. Spiritual growth can become a drug like any other. If you don’t balance what you’ve learned in the physical and social world you didn’t learn any lesson at all – you just escaped for a while. Escapism too can be fine, if you know when to stop. It’s a balancing act.

Paragliding is about joy and beauty. It takes you to places that are beautiful and demands that you experience them directly – uniquely. It demands that you go deep and stay there.

No one can accurately describe his or her experience flying. To do so requires growth on the listener’s part. The listener of any paragliding story must get into the skin of the one sharing what happened. To the extent that that listener can see, touch, smell and hear beauty, they can get closer to the experience being shared – but only close. You can’t touch it.

What can be more important that knowing joy and beauty directly? What if, after you die, and you see the face of God unfiltered, you cower in fear because you didn’t train well enough to see beauty, truth and joy directly? You’ve wasted your life.

Every day we turn away from beauty when we should embrace it. We see the spontaneous love between a mother and child in the Starbucks line and we turn away either with no interest, or perhaps embarrassed because we think it’s too personal to watch. I watch my children acting without a script. What they offer is spontaneous love and joy. It’s all discovery. They shit their pants too and throw tantrums because I didn’t let them stick the head down the toilet, but even those can be seen as experiences of spontaneous discovery, if you can put down your anger for a moment – if you can have, or at least pretend to have, all the time in the world.

There’s a lot of beauty in paragliding. The locales are the most obvious. The shape of the wing, its lines, the way the wing interacts with the wind, the graceful movements of the wing in flight, the colors, the techniques and the technology.

I’m a technologist so to me good engineering is beautiful. Good software design works: Google Maps, iPod, Mac OS X for that matter. I like technology that feels good in your hands. There is solving the problem, and then there is the elegant solution. Anyone can create something complicated. It takes genius to create something simple.

What could be a more simple solution than the arc of a paraglider to the problem of man’s desire for flight? It’s a archetype for any technologist. It approaches perfection.

Watching a paraglider fly is like watching a ballet. There are no violent moves: all grace, all poise. When they come into land it’s like they’re floating. I suppose they are, but we just don’t expect it, even when we know what’s going on. We’re genetically programmed not to believe it.

You can see the waves come in when you surf. You know when it’s your wave. You know when there are no waves and you know when a wave is dangerous. When you paraglide you can’t see the waves of air, you can’t see the thermals or dust devils. It’s like surfing blindfolded. You might hear it coming or see a bird or other paraglider get lift, but you can’t see the wind itself.

You are in a situation where you need to respect the forces of nature: to find control within nature’s limits. Talk about an antidote to consumer culture. There can be no manhandling, you can’t force something to happen. You find the groove, the pulse, and you work with it. You get in the zone. That’s where it all happens.

I have a artist friend, a painter, who celebrates the limitations of the frame: the 4 walls of the prison that is his art. He says that only within these walls can he find freedom. Well that’s the truth in all of life. Only when you respect the limits of nature can you truly change the world. You become nature’s ally.

Finally, in the words of my spiritual teacher: we are here to experience life and feel the feelings. That comes first. Then we want to express ourselves. If we don’t express ourselves we can never get to the next step, understanding, learning, letting go. Fear is our ultimate spiritual enemy. I’d never claim to have conquered fear, but I know if I don’t express these feelings it’s like they never happened. I can’t become them or share them with you.