When you’re eleven years old and a
friend dares you to do something cool
but dangerous, it’s hard to say no, even
when your head says it’s dumb and you
can feel in your bones that it’s a bad
idea.
That’s how I ended up trying to cross the
muddy harbor near my home, on foot, at
low tide. I’d never seen anybody else do
it, and within the first ten steps I knew
why. The thick mud and sludge clung to
my limbs like cement. The further we
went, the worse it got.
We just kept going, of course. But by
the time we were about a third of the
way out, we were stuck. Really stuck.
We were chest deep in black, stinking
clay, slime, and mud, and we were
exhausted. Each time we tried to move
we got dragged down further, and I felt
that awful sense of panic you get when
you realize that you are into something
beyond your control.
Thankfully, two things happened.
First, I found out that if I wriggled and
extracted one limb at a time, then tried
to “swim” on the surface, I could claw
my way forward just a little. So we
turned around and, inch by inch, made
our way back.
The second thing was that someone
on the shore spotted us and called the
lifeboat. Now I knew we were in trouble—
whether we made it out or not.
We sped up, and as soon as we made it
to the shore—only moments before the
lifeboat crew launched—we split and
ran home, both looking like monsters
from the deep.
Of course my mother found out about it
all and sent me around to the coxswain
of the lifeboat’s house to apologize in
person as well as offer myself to do
chores for the crew in penance.
It was a good lesson that has served me
well in so many survival situations: our
decisions have consequences, so don’t
embark on any adventures without a
solid back-up plan, and don’t be egged
on by others when your instincts tell you
something is a bad idea. It’s called life
wisdom. The smart person learns from
it or, even better, learns it from others.
Sadly, it wasn’t the last time I messed
up big time or had to stumble home
covered in dirt. But that’s all of our
journey in life: we do stuff that is often
not so smart, we get beat up by the
experience, and then we stumble home,
hoping to get mended and promising to
be wiser next time around.
When we have unchecked, unbridled
power and energy, with no sense of
which way to go, it can lead us on paths
that bog us down and harm us. It is
so tempting to want to write our own
rulebook and follow our own appetites
in life, but it is actually, and ironically,
a surefire way to erode your natural
power and influence.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to
ask questions of authority, and it’s
important to take risks, but unless we
learn to harness and correctly channel
our desire for independence, we can
often find ourselves in trouble.
Conversely, when we harness and direct
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