Life As A Surfing Metaphor

 I listen to Andy Stumpf's Cleared Hot podcast, and he most recently had former NFL kicker Steve Weatherford (episode #158) as a guest. A couple things from their conversation struck me as potentially important to living life, possibly ever, but certainly here in the early decades of the 21st century.

First Steve Weatherford's contribution to my continued growth; Roman's 5: 3 - 5:

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Whatever the source of your (or my own) faith, possibly the most important result of that is your individual sense of hope, regardless of external circumstances. Keeping yourself open to inspiration and insight, regardless of source, is an important aspect of developing one's humanity, I think. Taking what we learn and adapting that to our individual circumstances might be the most important lesson we each learn about ourselves. We should make a better effort to learn that (and pass it along) in a more organized fashion.

In the same podcast, Andy Stumpf equated life to a series of wavetops and troughs. Not to equivocate with a man with the accomplishments he has managed to live through accumulating, but I think his view is a bit limited (or more likely his opportunity to discuss it in the context of a podcast is the constraining factor). Whatever the case, I think that a better rendition of this life view is that life is a series of wave-building individual and group efforts that, when successful, result in a wavetop we can all surf down into the next trough. Which is where we start the cycle all over again; build the wave to be able to surf down into the next trough.

I understand why my fellow vets contemplate, and all too often choose, suicide; we spend a lot of time wandering around in life's troughs trying to find the next wave to build after the military spent "x" years trying to drown us in wave after wave to surf down the face of. I do that contemplative thing a lot, personally (one of the "benefits" of retirement). The main reason I listen to Andy Stumpf's podcast is because he so often talks about learning how to build your own life wave (I'm waxing on metaphorical; work with me here!). I was never a Navy SEAL; if not for the Coca Cola bottling company I never could have qualified to just be in the same (if earlier version) Navy as him. That said, all of us can find life lessons from our fellow humans if we're willing to see them and find the connection to ourselves.

Thus endeth today's sermon.