Finding Your Edge

I want to share a wonderful little story from Patricia Genoud-Feldman’s talk about learning from fear.  This story is about finding your edge:

There’s a story about a group of people climbing to the top of a mountain.  It turns out it’s pretty steep.  And as soon as they get to a certain height a couple of people look down, notice how far it is, and completely freeze.  They had come up against their edge and they couldn’t go beyond it.  Their fear was so great that they couldn’t move.

Other people tripped on ahead, laughing and talking.  But as the climb got steeper and more scary, more people became scared and froze, too.  All the way up this mountain there were places where people met their edge, froze, and couldn’t go any further.

The moral of the story is that it really doesn’t make any difference where you meet your edge.  Just meeting your edge is the point.  Life is a whole journey of meeting your edge again and again.  That’s where you’re challenged.  That’s where if you’re a person that wants to live, you start asking yourself questions, “Now, why am I so scared?”  “What is it that I don’t want to see?”  “Why can’t I go any further?”

The happy people who got to the top weren’t the heroes of the day.  They just weren’t afraid of heights.  They are going to meet their edge somewhere else.  The ones who froze at the bottom were not the losers.  They simply stopped first and so their lesson came earlier than the others.  However, sooner or later everybody meets his or her own edge.

It occurs to me that my love for adrenaline sports such as snowboarding, snowmobiling, skateboarding, and cycling is based on my desire to find my edge.  I love trying bigger, scarier things.  Even when I fall or get hurt, I love getting back up and trying again.