Grace Will Find You

I saw an old friend for brunch recently. It was a beautiful day and we sat outside feeling the cool crisp air and shared a Japanese-style pancake with the approximate diameter of a basketball, custard-like in the middle, golden brown on the outside. We had warm soft tofu and delicate slices of raw fish with fresh grated wasabi. A poached egg mixed into warm rice. It was a perfect kind of meal with someone very dear to me who I've known since we were both barely out of our teens.

He was the kind of friend who went on adventures. Cliff diving, mountain bikes, motorcycles, snowboards, scuba, skydiving. Following him meant taking my life into my hands. In deep powder I'd try and hold to his line, finding myself weaving through trees, heart racing, bouncing off of small rollers, hitting drops I never would have dared to on my own. I'd always bail after a bit, cutting across to safer lines, gentler terrain. But I would feel alive and embodied and stronger for having been pushed, a little bit, outside of my comfort.

We went diving together a long time ago in Mexico. We wore heavy wetsuits and swam through small caves and rocky, barren fields. Not the warm coral I was used to from growing up in Florida. I remember coming around a corner, a large boulder of sorts with an overhang on the other side. The space made was a good six or maybe eight feet above the sandy bottom and inside I saw my friend. A large school of small silvery fish flitted about filling the space, resting as they like to do out of the current. And in the center was my friend, floating with perfect neutral buoyancy. He had crossed his legs at his ankles, his hands floating in front of him. The fish surrounded him, bobbing with the same rhythmic flow of the waves as he did, undisturbed by his presence, comfortable in his stillness, his perfect balance.

I don't think of him as a particularly graceful person. In his movements, sure, years of climbing and hiking and risking his life racing motorcycles and throwing himself out of planes has ensured that. But spiritually, as someone who chases those things, who pushes himself in these ways, I've never associated with a kind of grace.

But over brunch, we talked about his new obsession with free diving. None of the heavy gear from scuba, the hiss of the regulator, the bubbles echoing in your ears with each breath. Instead, diving to thirty, forty feet with just what air you hold in your lungs, the pressure crushing it down inside your lungs, letting you hold your breath longer, stay down in the calm cold quiet for another few moments. A thing to never do alone lest you black out when you surface and drown.

There's less to worry about, he told me. No risk of the bends, of nitrogen expanding in your blood vessels, of it tearing at your joints. He said the only thing you really need to worry about is drowning. And then he paused, reflecting on what he said, reflecting on the process, what was required to be calm, be still, when there are entire bars of pressure between you and your next breath. And then he said, "It forces grace upon you."

I have not stopped thinking about that sentiment since. A process so elemental, that requires calm and serenity. A thing that makes panic, fear, anger, resentment a limitation to your ability to succeed. A process so clearly about releasing your attachments and accepting the very real constraints of your circumstance or you have to abandon the attempt or die fighting it.

I immediately felt the urge to throw myself into the nearest body of water. To chase his line through danger and serenity once again, to push myself to find a limit I haven't seen before. But in pursuit of grace. People think I ski trees because I want to go fast, or I want to feel danger. In truth, I want to hear the quiet of snow, muffled by the branches of trees waiting for spring to come again. I want to feel the stillness of snow, the weightlessness of speed. 

I think many things demand grace but few force them. Or maybe it's forced on us in such complex ways, such subtle ways that it's easy to miss that grace exists as an option. That finding that center of being present, accepting the difficult things, of not letting us be ruled or guided by anger and frustration and grief.

Writing is an emotional process. Publishing is full of incredible challenges outside your realm to anticipate, control, or solve. I think it too is a process that forces grace on all of us. And that being able to find that calm, that quiet in the heart of a storm of chaos can guide us forward to the success we so desperately crave. The feelings will arise – jealousy and anger are constant companions, but they can also be released, not held close to fuel our actions, to drag us off the path we desire.

Grace is a funny concept. It's hard to define and hard to see in any moment, but perhaps especially the ones we need it the most. Maybe the world forces it upon us, though, and I think, if only we can find a moment to breathe, accept it, and live in it we can find a path to walk that will lead us forward. But in the meantime, maybe I'll find an ocean and throw myself in it and do my best not to drown.