Testing Time- A Day of Life Lessons Worth Living

Papi Conpelo was never without his metal cup and his coffee.

Maybe these were his touchstones, holding memories of special times and people. Perhaps they provided him some kind of mystical security, but I never asked. When Papi sat quietly he would gracefully roll the cup from side to side in his hands. He and his cup: old friends engaged in a conversation. This cup and its contents had become part of his identity. Old, cold and dented on the outside. Fresh, warm and fluid on the inside. His cup. His coffee. His yin. His yang.

-from the Life andTimes of Papi Conpelo

6:55 p.m. Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Two Rock Aikido dojo. Petaluma, California

I stand in line waiting to move and give my training partner an honest attack. My exam is scheduled to happen in four days. Eleven hundred plus days have come and gone since my last exam. A part of each is dedicated to what will soon happen. Without the generous support of my colleagues helping me grow I wouldn't be here. The last six months have been particularly delightful and agonizing.

8:50 a.m. Four Days earlier. Friday June 10, 2011

AMU Building, Room 227. Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

I'm sitting in a room with forty of the brightest educators from the United States and abroad. They teach leadership and organizational behavior. Every year a different campus hosts the Organizational Behavior Teacher Conference (OBTC) and attracts over two hundred people like these surrounding me. This is my eighth OBTC. Dr. Kathy Kane, University of San Francisco (USF), is sitting nearby. She is this year's OBTC program coordinator, responsible for the success of the entire week. At her invitation Carlos Buhler www.carlosbuhler.com is also in the room. Kathy has introduced a new series of presentations called Conversations with Interesting People into the schedule. Carlos is this morning's interesting person. He is 57 years old, lean, wiry, relaxed, composed and alert. Nothing in the room escapes his gaze.

I spent a lot of time hunting in the Arizona desert where I grew up. Hawks would perch themselves on the poles supporting high-tension lines stretched across barren terrain, and from there they would wait to silently drop, strike and then carry off their unsuspecting prey. Buhler's appearance is hawk-like. A distant feeling comes over me. His energy will soon descend, but not take. Rather, he is about to give to us from what he has learned.

The film Touching the Void (have you seen it?) documents the 1988 successful first-ascent of the west face of Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. Simon Yates and Joe Simpson made that climb. But the film is dedicated to their descent and its emotional aftermath. From my hunting days I know that the real work of any outing happens after your shot has reached its intended target. Then every move you make becomes important. Living in remote country, hours from cities and medical help, with dirt roads being the norm, drinking only the water I could carry or find in streams, I've never thought of hunting as a sport. It was the way we gathered most of our food. To my father, hunting bordered on the sacred. He taught us (my sister, brother and me) to respect the land and what lived there. It sustained us. Mountaineering shares a similar respect. The "what-we-do-now-that-we've-made-it-this-far" is crucial.

Coming off Siula Grande, Simpson fell and broke his leg. Procedures dictated that Yates leave him and continue to the base camp alone. But he didn't. Instead, he selflessly decided, at great personal risk, to help his partner, and that became the fascinating and gut wrenching story. Rent the DVD. Experience it yourself.

So what? So, Carlos Buhler knows Yates and Simpson. He also knows those who made the ill-fated 1996 Everest expedition (read Krakauer's Into Thin Air) including the ones who perished. Buhler has climbed Siula Grande's west face and Everest. He is one of the world's top high altitude mountaineers. His specialty is doing it with small teams, no oxygen, and carrying minimal gear. He moves with negligible funding and tackles first ascent. He has taken on some of the most the world's most difficult routes, under the worst conditions.

This morning Dr. Joe Garcia of Western Washington University (Buhler's alma mater) is sitting to his left. At 9:00 a.m. Joe kicks off the conversation. Buhler smiles and extends his hawk-like gaze. Then his energy gracefully descends on us all. Our ninety-minutes with him begins to disappear.

The first question comes and he listens carefully. It is actually about six questions all strung together. He cocks his head to one side and exhales, "OK! Which one of these issues do you want me to take on first? Because this one will take our entire time." Everyone laughs. But he isn't joking. He dissects and addresses each point in a thorough and meticulous manner as though he is nailing pitons into a sheer cliff, connecting ropes, securing belay lines, checking the weather, coordinating with partners, and on and on. His reply to question #1 lasts a fascinating half hour. Then he cuts it short so other questions can surface. They come from all sides of the room, seeking connections between expertise, experience, management and parenting, education and ego, leadership in practice versus as discussed in journals, case studies, etc. He is inquisitive, too. "Why do you want to know that?" He wants to understand how his reply will serve the individual questioner and for what reasons (some reasons are personal) and for the long haul.

I find myself reflecting on Lawrence Gonzales' Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies and Why. Does Buhler know Gonzales? What does he think of his research and work? How has he dealt with the issues that Gonzales writes about? And then our time is over. My questions (as with others from colleagues also in the room) are left unasked. But that's OK, I look down at the yellow piece of paper on my lap. My hand has automatically recorded important points for me to work and play with on a future day. When that will be I'm not sure. My scribble reads:

• You are free to do things totally by yourself. I am here to give you best options on how NOT to do that!
• I have survived so far because I learned to pull together and connect every facet of all I have learned. Relationship building is what you must do in any kind of enterprise that you will ever undertake.
• You have to be willing to call on ALL the resources and relationships you have in order to achieve your goals. Understand something - everything you do, every person you meet may twenty-five years later end up in a room with you. You need to live like this will happen, so that when it does (they end up in a room with you) you are clean with what you did, and the people there are on your team and will count with you.
• Don't think you can ever waste a single relationship. In mountain climbing an enormous undertaking happens years before you arrive at a base camp: finding sources of funding, assembling equipment, practicing, creating teams, making promises including those to your kids, making deals with airlines, creating contingencies, etc. You MUST make good on all of your promises. If you don't, then when you come to ask for help again at some future time (and believe me you will) those who are listening will be less apt to support your effort. The web of relationship is what makes a person's life possible and rewarding.
• Understand that there is a structure underneath you that allows you to take a long-term view of the processes to achievement. Invest in, make and build upon that underlying structure.
• In climbing, as in life, it DOES NOT MATTER that you ever summit. What DOES MATTER is that you learn. Yet, I was driven to become the first American to summit two of the fourteen 8.000 meter Himalayan peaks. And I did! Even so, it DID NOT matter that I ever summited. It only mattered that I learned. I am still climbing. My life can end in an instant.

1:30 p.m. Friday, June 10, 2011

AMU Building, Cafeteria. Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

A tray of food is in my hands. Lunch is almost over, but the place is still full. There are only a few empty chairs scattered around the room. I find one. People will soon end their mealtime conversations and scatter off to the afternoon sessions. I decide to slowly enjoy this meal rather than rush to get somewhere else. I glance over my left shoulder. There, at the adjacent table sits Carlos Buhler. I eat. The room clears. It's quiet. I step over to thank him before moving on to another session where I'll be late.

He looks up at me and we engage.

Carlos: "Hi, good to meet you. Where are you from?"

Me: "Sonoma County, north of San Francisco."

Carlos: "Ahh, great place. Did you enjoy yourself this morning?"

Me: "Yah, very much!"

Carlos: "Can you stay and talk with me a while? I mean, what'd you think? What did this morning mean for you?" (He really wants to know - like I'm going to be one of those people who will show up in his room in twenty-five years!!)

Carlos again: "Is this OK? I don't want to keep you from a session, but I want to know. Can we talk?"

[I sit down on the floor next to his chair, between him and Joe Garcia. I feel like I'm in kindergarten all over again. We chat, until a moment appears and I get to ask my question from this morning.]

-- to be continued in next month's Ronin Post --

A Lesson In Action

Remember last month's newsletter? The topic was breathing as a practice in the face of fear.

The lesson was punctuated on Tuesday, December 23rd. A score of us attended an aikido class at Two Rock Aikido. Richard Strozzi-Heckler, our sensei, moved us into an exercise for which he is uniquely known: walking, turning, standing. A kind of organized chaos. Random and rapid, yet relaxed. The idea: in a confined and silent room, each of us moves and allows the space between us to appear and disappear revealing opportunity for best action. To be in this swirl you are encouraged to forego a plan, other than to allow a sort of gravity (created by the empty space and those around you) to pull you from one direction to another. Its value, either as a martial arts exercise or life metaphor, may be hard to imagine until practiced. Kind of like ice cream - explain all you want; but it's only through taking a bite that one really understands and enjoys. Such is the way with any commitment. A few minutes into the exercise Richard's voice cut the silence, "Pay attention to your breath! It's the platform of our art."

This month's topic for consideration, again for effective action during times of stress, tension and fear, is humor and laughter.

Google search laughter and you'll find a flood of online articles advising its mind-freeing benefit and remedies for creativity. A belly laugh every twenty-four hours is apparently good heart medicine - emotionally and physically.

Author Laurence Gonzales offers his perspective:

· "Every pursuit has its own subculture, from hang gliders and step creek boaters to cavers and mountain bikers. I love their dark and private humor, those ritual moments of homage to the organism, which return us to a protective state of cool. It unequivocally separates the living from the dead."

· "The fact is you have to deal with these things [fear and terror] to the best of your ability. If you don't work with it, it'll get to you."

· "It sounds cruel, but survivors laugh and play, and even in the most horrible situations -- perhaps especially in those situations -- they continue to laugh and play. To deal with reality you must first recognize it as such --- (P)lay puts a person in touch with his environment while laughter makes the feeling of being threatened manageable."

· "Moods are contagious, and the emotional states involved with smiling, humor, and laughter are among the most contagious of all. It's automatic, and one person laughing or smiling induces the same reaction in others. --- There is evidence that laughter can send chemical signals to actively inhibit the firing of nerves in the amygdala, thereby dampening fear."

· "It is not a lack of fear that separates elite performers from the rest of us. They're afraid, too, but they're not overwhelmed by it. They manage fear."
(p 40-41, Deep Survival, 2004, W.W. Norton publisher)

As for me, I recall a cold January afternoon twelve years ago. Laying seriously injured on Capitola Beach, California, I was alone. My fall from a boulder had completely split my left femur. My friend ran for help and returned an hour later with a bevy of paramedics and police officers. "Are you the victim?" they asked, " We're looking for a dead body." "Yes and no," I confessed. "Yes, I'm the (ugh) victim, and NO, I'm not dead." Into a metal basket I went. The pain - horrendous. Our trek, the rescuers figured, needed to be straight out into the ocean, avoid the big rocks, then circle back onto sand once near the ambulance. The tide was incoming. It was going to be a rough trip and we all knew it. Every step's jarring motion produced in me a scream. So I asked the medics, now up to their glutes in salt water, "You guys mind if I do something strange?" "Nah, go ahead," they agreed; and I began humming loudly - more like groaming (think hybrid hum and groan). The tune, "Think of Me" from Phantom of the Opera. The medics started to grin and laugh. Through half a mile of surf my groaming continued, mixed with intermittent screams. At times, I was smiling too. What a relieving way to overcome the pain (mine) and the work (theirs). It also kept me conscious. It remains for me an unforgettable journey. And for them, perhaps the strangest, funniest and most relaxed rescue ever.

Returning to Tuesday, December 23rd - a few days ago. Something happened that night that was unexpectedly funny (maybe that's what makes humor so powerful -it evokes spontaneity). Richard was in the midst of testing one of the students. The atmosphere was formal and serious, with high expectation for excellence in a display of deliberate attacks and blends. There was tension in the air. "Show me variations from yokomen uchi," Richard ordered. And he continued, "Now, show me variations from morote dori". And on it went becoming faster and more intense - "from katadori" - "from ushiro waza". Then suddenly, making no sense at all, his voice cracked the tension across the room, "Now show me - sand the floor." For an instant none of us believed what we had heard. I started laughing. The laughter became infectious. A warm wave of relief swept the dojo and the person being tested proceeded with ease, grace and dignity, and filled with breath. The rest of us watching, thoroughly enjoyed the art he displayed.

If you have never seen the film, The Karate Kid the "show me sand the floor" is as meaningless as un-savored ice cream. If you have seen that movie - maybe you're smiling too.

Consider this: laughter increases one's capacity for breath.

A Review Of and Lessons From Deep Survival

It's not often a book comes across my desk that I rave about. I'm frequently recommending good books because there actually is a lot of good stuff (old and new) out there that supports constructive personal and professional growth, leadership, team effectiveness and awareness: e.g. The Silent Pulse (George Leonard), Coming To Our Senses (Jon Kabat-zinn), The Leadership Challenge (Kouzes & Posner); and past stalwarts like In Search of the Warrior Spirit (Richard Strozzi-Heckler) and Mastery (again ... George Leonard), plus some that get you thinking with an aesthetic touch - Zen Guitar (Philip Sudo) and Illusions (Richard Bach ... remember him?). To recommend is common. To rave is rare.

Not to take anything from the above-mentioned authors and their listed works, here’s a rave about Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why (Laurence Gonzales). You must, should, ought to get this book. In a recent email to selected clients I advised them "if you don't own it, buy it; if you own it, read it; if you've read it, read it again ... and then recommend it to others."

Background. Last month Chuck Root, Managing Director of Double-Eagle Financial, attended the Allied Ronin Summer Retreat and gave all attendees a copy as a gift. A few days later on a flight to Phoenix I cracked open my copy. Last week I finished it. No, it's not a difficult read; that's not what took the time. In fact, it hits straight and hard and is well researched and documented, combining philosophy with current understanding of brain functioning, and it’s a fun and quick read. I just really wanted to absorb and take it in what was there, make margin notes, highlight and cross reference to other readings and life experiences ... and jam as many personal scribbles inside the front cover as possible.

While reading I recalled that a friend and classmate from the Academy recently told me he was reading it too. He's not a "touchy-feely" kind of guy. Rather, he's an avowed get-to-the-point-make-a-profit-run-it-hard-turn-and-burn businessman. But he has depth of spirit, a sense of feeling and a great heart and he firmly believes in people - particularly his family, friends, clients and those who work for him. He knows compassion and empathy to his bones – I know this because I know some of his history. So his endorsement made my reading even more poignant.

Here's my endorsement. I've just finished reading Deep Survival and today I am starting to read it again. That’s right, front cover to back cover – every word. This time even more slowly. It's that good. The messages and research are that important. Here are three reasons (though there are more) why I’m recommending you do the same.

Number 1. The lessons from my own could-have-been-a-near-death event of January 1997. While taking a leisurely walk on Capitola Beach (Santa Cruz, CA) with my friend John Gallagher I had a serious accident. This was walk for which I was ill-prepared and throughout which (until the moment of the accident) I disregarded my internal voice which was saying quite loudly, "What are you doing hiking over these slime covered boulders wearing smooth soled shoes and dress jacket? Sure it's beautiful out here ... but right now you are in the wrong place with the wrong equipment!" About 30 minutes into the walk in a very remote section I fell off a large rock and severely severed my left femur - a complete split 10" in length starting at the ball joint and spiraling down the shaft.

My first reaction were words of denial, "Uh, John, I think I've dislocated my hip." In fact, I had heard the bone snap ... and so had John. That denial plus the events that happened between that moment and the next morning’s surgery is another story for a different, though related chapter. But for this newsletter and this book review/endorsement let's just say that the accident gave rise to two months of rehab during which I questioned a lot of what my life was about and what I felt was important. My days of reflection informed me that if I could just communicate a singularly important message regarding the need to BE HERE NOW then this could be one of the greatest services I might provide others - individuals, businesses, students, teachers – in my life.

Archimedes said, "Give me a place to stand with a lever and I will move the whole world." Question: What determines the effectiveness of a lever? Answer: The focal point. To Be Here Now is, in my opinion, the focal point for many of life’s levers. Laurence Gonzales hits the need to BE HERE NOW over and over again in Deep Survival. Yes, he uses those exact words. From jet jockeys to mountain climber to corporate executives to snow mobile experts to river rafters to moms and dads, to artists ... it doesn't matter the profession, occupation or avocation … BE HERE NOW is THE KEY.

I have a sign taped to the wall at home ... a saying I came up with recently: "The NOW has NO COMPARISON." The message: each time you try to compare what is happening in the now to something else you in fact miss the moment that is now. As a result you lose ground. You move out-of-touch with reality. You are most likely trapped by the past and, sadly, you probably don’t know it. You are not living! You are reacting. I suggest that comparing the now to something else is a wide spread phenomena and habit; and that it’s become normal and is the cause for why we humans tend to repeat so much of our past – especially the parts of the past that we swear we don’t want anymore.

On a flight last month from London to Los Angeles I watched a documentary about the nomadic sea gypsies living in the waters off Thailand. Of interest to documentarian was how these people are so in touch with the natural world around them (i.e. being here now) that they were able to sense the massive tsunami of December 26, 2004, as it was happening and take actions that allowed an inordinate number of them to survive when compared with other people of the region who perished. Researching these survivors the film maker interviewed an expert on their culture and found that these nomads have no word, no language construct, no concept for what we call “yesterday” or “tomorrow”. Ask one of these people, “How old are you?”, and they look at you like you are from Mars. “What are you talking about?” they would ask, because they have no concept called “age”. They sometime spend years (that’s our measurement) not seeing other family members and then decide to paddle over by for a visit. They have no “hello” or “goodbye” in their language. As a result when these family gatherings come about they do so without the extreme emotions present in most other cultures. It’s as if they went next door for a moment (our calendar might measure that moment as being 1825 days) and then came right back over. No big deal, they live in the now. The documentary ended with an equally profound observation about another word missing from their vocabulary. While they do have a natural sense of fear, they have no concept of, nor word for worry. Interesting!

Benjamin Disraeli once said, “Everyday, man crucifies himself between two thieves: the regrets of yesterday, and the fears of tomorrow.” Think about it. How much of what you want or once had (or you had the opportunity to have had) has been robbed from you by your regrets of yesterday and your worries about the future? I suggest that our culture, our society, individually and collectively, lives in regret and worry to an extreme. For evidence: take a good look at a newspaper; OR watch a popular TV sitcom or drama; OR listen five minutes of network radio news; OR watch a commercial; or listen to today’s political rhetoric. Then ask yourself, “was regret or worry used in what I just saw, read or heard?”

Number 2. Historical perspectives. Reportedly Charles Duell, head of the U.S. Patent Office in the late 1800’s was once quoted as saying, “Everything that can be invented, has been invented.” If he did say this … then was he ever wrong. I’ve often thought it would be great if we could exhume his body, load it onto the space shuttle, put an iPod on his chest and outfit him with earbuds, leave a copy of USA Today addressing the development cruise missile weaponry that uses scramjets to reach speeds on the order of 16,000 mph, leave a laptop computer on a table with instructions how to download and use Google-Earth®, put a blender and a microwave on the floor just for fun with instructions on how to make smoothies and bake a potato in a couple of minute. And then, wake him up and watch him freak out. Everything that can be invented … hasn’t. We (today) live in a reality that someone (past) would call impossible. BUT if we think in terms of the imagination, perhaps Duell had it right, assuming he actually said those words. Everything that can be invented lives in the imagination (Einstein believed this) … and therefore has already been invented at some level. Sound far-fetched? Read Steven Hawking’s work A Brief History of Time – another highly recommended book.

What’s this all got to do with Laurence Gonzales and Deep Survival? It has to do with our perceptions of reality and how we act upon perspectives with (or without) cognitive awareness. Gonzales asserts that people (including you and I) are run daily by our emotional/physical bodies and we don’t know it. We need to enhance our cognitive abilities.

Deep Survival builds upon itself. I recommend you start at the beginning and read progressively forward. Sure you can skip around if you want, but the author (a contributing editor for National Geographic Adventure magazine and winner of numerous awards) is a serious student of life and a professional. He writes what he does, in the order that he does, for a purpose. Don’t miss this!!! That being said, if you were to skip forward to page 31 would find the following, “The oldest medical and philosophical model, going back to the Greeks, was of a unified organism (here he’s speaking of the human being) in which mind was part of and integral to the body. Plato, on the other hand, thought of mind and body as separate, with the soul going on after death. Aristotle brought them back together again. But it seems that people have been struggling with the spit for a very long time, indeed, probably because they innately feel as if they have minds that are somehow distinct from their bodies.”

As you continue to read you will find soundly researched and scientifically based arguments for the notion of one-ness … within individuals, between systems, across borders, etc.; indeed a connectedness (if you will) that has been proposed by some of the greatest thinkers and researchers old and new, e.g. Carl Jung and Meg Wheatley. Gonzales’ selected bibliography lists in excess of eighty well-accepted texts and authors, none of them lightweight or “fu-fu” or “woo-woo”. His homework runs from Marcus Aurelius (Meditations) to Maurice and Maralyn Bailey (117 Days Adrift) to Clausewitz (On Strategy: Inspiration and Insight from a Master Strategist) to Epictetus (Enchiridion) to Jim Collins (Good to Great) to R.F. Haines (A Breakdown in Simultaneous Information Processing) to Paul Fussell (Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War) to Daniel Goleman (Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence) to Tao-tzu (Tao Te Ching) to Al Siebert (The Survivor Personality) to Shane O’Mara (Spatially Selective Firing Properties of Hippocampal Formation Neurons in Rodents and Primates) to J. O’Keefe and L. Nadel (The Hippocampus as a Cognitive Map) to R. M. Yerkes and J. B. Dodson (“The Relation of Strength to Stimulus to Rapidity of Habit-Formation,” Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology) … and on and on.

Number 3. This book relates to every aspect of daily life. When Chuck Root passed out copies last month my first impression was this would be a series of vignettes about mountain climbers and thrill seekers. I was wrong. I literally judged a book by its cover. Something many of us do with people and organizations and companies and philosophies. We judge by what we first observe (their covers) … then we shove our thinking into a box called the past … and it gets us into trouble.

Gonzales takes us through current research and understanding of brain chemistry and functioning. From this you will get a clear and basic knowledge of what each of us walks with every day that impacts our every moment whether you or not you want to believe it … the amygdala, functioning of the left and right brain hemispheres, pattern-recognition, nerve synapses, the hippocampus, etc. These are at work, even without our understanding or awareness; yes, even in this moment as you now read these words. They are at work right now, and will affect you today as you study for a test (if you are a student); or ask a girl or guy out on a date or you are wanting to break up or (if you are “looking around” or doing the opposite); or take your kids to school or change a diaper (if you are a parent); or go surfing or skinny dipping or water skiing or swimming (if you are on vacation); or run into a burning building or a forest fire or a bar fight or a domestic dispute (if you are a fireman or police officer); or buy or sell stocks or bonds or real estate (if you have money to invest or otherwise “play with”) … in short, no matter what you are up to today.

My own reflection. I found Deep Survival giving me a clearer understanding of myself, particularly in relationships – what I seek and avoid and why, what I am attracted to, what I’m blind to, what I am averse to, what I rush towards against all better judgment, what I attend to and (alas) what I disregard or want to pretend just isn’t so. Deep Survival also allowed me to better understand patterns of attitude and action that exist outside of myself, i.e. in other people, most importantly in those people I am or have been very close to or intimate with, and how I can make sense of these patterns. I found my first reading to be, in a word, unsettling. This is good, because being unsettled allows me (perhaps you too?) the opportunity to look anew and take fresh courses of action.

Deep Survival now becomes a highly suggested book for my friends and loved ones, and of course for those who have been and will be touched by the work of Allied Ronin. Get it. Read it. Take notes. Dog-ear it. Think about it … and then think about it some more. Read it again. Recommend it to others. And if you will --- Take Bold, Yet Mindful Action!