Finding Life on the Edge
I often work out at a beautiful set of stairs here in SF called the Lyon stairs, it’s a current obsession of mine and also a great workout.
It’s been stormy, cold and cloudy this past week but the weather broke on Sunday so I headed to the stairs to get my usual 10 am workout.
As I drove to the stairs I noticed a huge storm cloud hovered over the middle of the City, “This is not good”, I thought to myself.
I happened to be in the middle of listening to Krista Tippett’s interview of Stephen Batchelor on OnBeing. At the very end, Batchelor makes a very poignant point when Krista asks him about the tension between knowing that death is certain but the time of death uncertain.
Krista asks, “What we should do with that?”
To which Batchelor beautifully replies:
“The weird paradox is that the more you ask yourself that question — “Death is certain, it’s time is uncertain, what should I do?” This bring you back to a very vivid sense that you’re alive, it intensifies the sense of aliveness… It is kind of an intensifier of being alive, a kind of almost a celebration of being here at all…”
These were the closing words I heard as I closed the car door and made my way to the stairs.
The stairs are often hidden in shade in the early hours so I go a little later to ensure that I’ll get some sun which was especially needed on this day given it was dipping into the 30’s at night and slowly warming up in the mornings.
The first 3 or 4 up-and-downs were cold and painful and my friend the storm cloud that I spotted on my way to the stairs continued to loom. My legs had a really difficult time warming up, stiff and frozen for the first few reps.
“Damn, I wish that f**king cloud would move”, I was thinking to myself.
Right as I started to get warmed up, the sun broke free from behind the storm cloud, putting the stairs partially in sunlight and partially in shade as I ascended and descended.
My breath began to billow from my lungs in small bursts of visible steam as I made my way up. I played with being able to see my breath and breathed more deeply, like a five year old seeing the miracle of the visible breath for the first time.
Then Batchelor’s words came back to me as I saw the physical metaphor I was in the midst of experiencing: it was only on the border between warm and cold on the edge between light and dark that I could visibly see the life-giving breath within me. By BEING IN the contrast between light and dark, I could actually SEE that I was alive, see the life moving within me.
I’ve been on a number of edges in my life lately and I’ve found myself questing for comfort, searching for something solid to root into, looking for some ground from which I can launch. But I realized as I saw my breath bursting into hot steam in the late morning air, that this is not where the energy of life is contained. This is not where we can and DO feel alive. We actually find ourselves feeling most alive when we are on an edge.
This DOES NOT mean looking for trauma or crisis, no, it’s finding the growing, evolutionary edge that is forming us and being able to sit in the heat of that edge and let it mold us.
For me, struggling with career and working deeply in relationship are edges for me. They bring up my insecurities and questions about who I truly am as a person, they push me to my edges. But it’s ON these edges and BECAUSE OF these questions that these edges bring up, that I get to know myself more deeply as a unique human being on this planet.
Years ago I wrote a poem called THE EDGE:
Life exists on the edge.Out where the warriors battleand the thinness of life is contained within every step,Here, life permeates our beings.In the face of the unknownin the face of fearlife radiatesit pulsatesit can be tasted as bitteras sweetas real.This battle is not fought with swords and shieldsBut with open hearts and deep breaths.It is not a polished and pretty package,it is tarnished and beatenbruised and batteredlike steel beaten into sword.It is on the edge,on the borders of the unknown,on the balance between the light and the abysson this shaky, hair-thin linethat depth, passion, and the fire of life is felt.It is in the frailty of life where substance is found.We know not what time we are given,there are no guarantees,And in that we must rejoice.For the deep breath breathes elsewhere.Our edges must be sought,these quests welcomed,for nothing is guaranteedand nothing is safe.Life exists in the fireWelcome the heatallow it to burn,suck in the richness, the sweetnessthe bitterness and the pain.Seek the edge,For it is here where you will find your life.
I’m learning to lean into these edges, learning to balance on them rather than shy away. To welcome them and realize that they are an evolutionary edge for me and I should not seek comfort and solace or run away and retreat into serenity.
It is on this edge between light and dark that I will find life, challenge, growth and evolution. This edge will take me to the next edge and to the next edge, breath by breath, stair by stair.
I stopped, took a breath and looked out over the mouth of the San Francisco Bay, Angel Island, Sausalito, Alcatraz. Stepped back from the edge of the stairs just a touch.
Man, the views…the views…
Now back to the workout…
