Ghosts, Spiders, and Snowboarding
(2 minute read)
The ghost of a future self
I’m haunted by a ghost. He looks like me, but 5 years wiser and more bad-ass. I see flashes of Him in people I admire.
One day, I watched my ghost stick a backflip on a snowboard. I imagined my own body rotating to the point of no return– either flip all the way or break your neck.
The lightness and speed of snowboarding was always a symbol of personal freedom, but this situation grasped me. Paralyzed, I couldn’t run from a backflip fascination. I found myself skipping small-talk… asking strangers if they could backflip. I was being called by something.
Responding to this internal battle, I practiced in the safety of Foam-Pit-World, far removed from the real arena.
Meeting the Guru
I had a dream that I signed up for a mental training camp, taught by a wise and seemingly unreasonable guru. The ancient, white-bearded, wrinkled man thought I was ready to encounter fear itself– in a cave of spiders.
I ran through the cave with frantic steps in sync with spider limbs on my skin. The webs caught my screams in the confined darkness. I saw a light and scrambled towards it to escape.
The guru paused at the mouth of the cave and told me to turn around and embrace the spiders. “The way of development cannot be changed,” he said as my bones shuddered, “Fear is important, it keeps you alert and alive. Maybe those spiders are the key to something within yourself.”
Answering the call
The next opportunity I had in the mountains, I ditched my beer-drinking friends to shovel snow onto a small hill late one afternoon. Even the sun felt a reluctance to drop behind the peaks as I tested the jump’s steepness.
Staring down from the top of the hill, I felt like escaping the spiders– or throwing up. I was certain of one thing– whatever was haunting me wouldn’t forgive me if I went home now. The guru was right. I turned my body and board down the hill.
I was alive! I felt an out-of-body energy pumping toward my destiny.
In that brief moment my ghost grinned, “You did it, you Son of a Bitch.”
Return with the gift
Sometimes my path in life feels secretly arbitrary; it can be based on external expectations (“what college are you going to?”, “what job do you have lined up?”). But occasionally, I’m called to act solely for me.
I needed to build this internal piece of myself, something better than pride– outweighing any Instagram comment, award, or resume item. No, I gained an intimate relationship to my own fear. I can now sense if the fear is trying to save my life, or if it’s a fear that needs to be conquered. I now see myself as someone that can go beyond my comfort zone to accomplish what I want. When I hesitate to raise my hand in class, or ask for a job, or introduce myself to a stranger– I embrace the spiders as an opportunity to be courageous.
On another note, the guru in my dream also thought that every bank teller should display black-widow spiders in plexiglass cages to “scare people into saving.”